The Flu shares pride of place with the Great War and Villa, September 25, 1918.

The Spanish Flu, which would kill more Americans in 1918/19 than combat in Europe would, was now sufficiently newsworthy that it was making the front page day after day.  On this day, readers of the Casper paper woke up to find that as many as 30,000 cases of the particularly deadly and virulent flu strain had run through Army camps.

They also learned that Villa had returned to full violence in his war against Carranza.

In more positive news, Germany appeared to be collapsing.

Cheyenne's readers had equally disturbing news, including a claim that the Germans had returned to worshiping pagan gods in their desperation, a rather extreme claim to say the least.

Monday at the Bar: Courthouses of the West: A New Wind River Tribal Judicial Center?

Courthouses of the West: A New Wind River Tribal Judicial Center?:

A New Wind River Tribal Judicial Center?

 The current Wind River Tribal Court.

We wrote about this courthouse quite some time ago, here:

Courthouses of the West: Wind River Indian Reservation Tribal Court: This is the Wind River Indian Reservation Tribal Court, which also houses various other law related facilities. The court is located in F...

An interesting article in the Star Tribune reports that  representatives of the Tribal judicial system appeared in front of a committee of the Wyoming legislature this past week to seek support, which they received, for a new judicial center.  The Federal government will have to provide the funding, but state support can't hurt.



The jail is grossly overcrowded and apparently the new three judge panel for the Court is enforcing the criminal law much more rigorously than in the past.  The deficiencies of the courthouse, which includes the jail and the headquarters for the police department, are showing themselves.  About three times as many prisoners are housed there on a daily basis than it was built for.



I can attest personally that the courtroom is quite inadequate.  I hope they receive the funding they're seeking, and soon.

The Influenza Epedemic Abating? The Casper Daily Tribune, September 24, 1918.

The horrible disaster of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic was just starting to hit the front pages of Wyoming newspapers and here it's reported as abating.

Technically, it might have been. The flu had valleys and peaks, the epidemic rose and fell and then rose again.  It might actually have been in a declining state, but far from gone, in September 1918.

And a call went out for fruit pits to help counter poison gas. . .

Monday At The Bar: Courthouses of the West: Town of Mills, Wyoming Municipal Court.

Courthouses of the West: Town of Mills, Wyoming Municipal Court.:

This is the Town of Mills Municipal Court in Mills, Wyoming.  Mills is a city adjacent to the City of Casper, so I should have added this additional Natrona County municipal court some time ago.

The Big Picture: 5th Co., 161st Depot Brigade, Camp Grant, Ill., Lieut. C.A. Geers commanding., Sept. 24, 1918

The Global Collapse of the Central Powers. The news of September 23, 1918

Because we've been dealing mostly with the American effort in France, we've ceased keeping readers here up to date on other theatres.  If we did, this would read as an even lengthier treatise than it already risks becoming.

But there was a lot going on.  Specifically, in the Macedonian Front the Central Powers were going into a headlong collapse. . . as were the Turks in the Middle East where some pronounced mounted warfare was gaining significant advances.

One of Cheyenne's papers, remarkably up to date (as many of these World War One papers were, they were on time and pretty close to being on target, frequently), was reporting the Serbs gaining ground against the Austro Hungarians and the collapse of the Turks.  It also noted that the Russian Whites had exhumed the bodies of the Czar and his family and reinterred them.

William Jennings Bryan, received the cold shoulder in Cheyenne.

And, yes, once again, there was a clash on the Mexican border.

In Laramie readers of one of the town's two local papers also learned about the events in the Middle East.  In spite of what would seem to have been the obvious signs of a complete Central Powers collapse, the paper noted that the planning was for the war to go on into 1919, which was universally believed among the Allies.

And snow was coming to high altitude Laramie. . .

Casper readers of one of Casper's two papers found a really busy front page.  Events in Macedonia lead the headlines but the Turk's fate figured prominently as well.

The clash on the Mexican border and the exhumation of the Czar and his family also figured prominently and Casperites were informed that men were going to be released from non essential industries so that they could go into the Army.  Their place would be taken by women.

And the Casper paper reported that Catholic Archbishop John Ireland was in failing health and likely to pass away.  Ireland was a towering figure at the time.

From the Liberty Theatre, Camp Sevier, S.C. September 23, 1918.

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: St. Anthony's of Padua Catholic Church, Cody Wyoming:

Churches of the West: St. Anthony's of Padua Catholic Church, Cody Wyoming:

This is St. Anthony's of Padua Catholic Church in Cody Wyoming. This Catholic Church is the largest parish in the United States, in geographic extent, as it covers over 6,000 square miles of territory.  The Romanesque style church was built in 1954, replacing an earlier church.  It's one of two Catholic Churches named for St. Anthony's of Padua, the other church so dedicated being located in Casper.

Poster Saturday: Post World War Two National Guard advertisement.

An advertisement appealing to veterans of World War Two shortly after it had ended.  The copy writer was obviously trying to speak GI.

Best Post of the Week of September 16, 2018

The best post of the week of September

American Service Organizations During the Great War

The German Government Complains about Shotguns. 

September 19, 1918.Mid Week at Work: “Girls deliver ice. Heavy work that formerly belonged to men only is being done by girls. The ice girls are delivering ice on a route and their work requires brawn as well as the patriotic ambition to help.” 9/16/1918

American Service Organizations During the Great War

Some time ago we published this photo:

Gov. C. E. Milliken addressing new soldiers at Y.M.C.A. Hut 24, Fort Devons, Massachusetts. August 5, 1918.

And we've certainly posted a lot of photographs of members of the American Red Cross in Europe during WWI as well.

What was going on with service organizations anyhow? Well, quite a lot.  Almost too  much, quite frankly, to report on accurately.

And, moreover, why did this occur?

First of all, let's look at what did occur, although our report will frankly be incomplete.

And let's start with the American Red Cross.

American Red Cross

It should be evident from the numerous photographs of the American Red Cross in action during World War One that it played a huge role in the war.  Indeed, while not readily evident from what we have posted here, it played a gigantic role that extended to both sides of the war, with individual national Red Cross organizations playing a different role in different countries.  In the case of the Allies, the American Red Cross's role was large and partisan prior to the United States entering the war, and its medical establishment was so well developed that the American Army simply partially absorbed it in place, personnel and all.

How on earth did that occur?

The American Red Cross was founded in 1881 by American nurse, Clara Barton.  She had seen the International Red Cross in operation in the Franco Prussian War and was impressed with its humanitarian mission.

Clara Barton in 1904.

The Swiss based International Red Cross was a young organization when Barton first encountered it, existing only since 1863. It's origin has specifically been war, when its primary inspiration, Henri Dunat, had witnesses Italian casualties in the the Italian wars of unification suffering on the battlefield without attention.  His efforts resulted in the International Committee of the Red Cross, to provide relief to the victims of war of any nation, and it exists to this day.

The originator of the International Committee of the Red Cross, Henri Dunat.

Indeed, the ICRC provided nursing services to all the combatants during the First World War and continues on to this present day as a humanitarian organization.  Barton was inspired by her observations of the ICRC during the Franco Prussian War, as noted, and came back to the United States and lead the effort to form the ARC.

The American Red Cross was just one of the many Red Cross organizations that contributed nurses, hospitals and doctors to the warring nations.  It arrived in Europe well before any American soldiers did in that role.  It's important to note, however, that its services were provided to Allied nations in that context.  In later wars the ICRC tends to be associated with neutrality, and this should be how it was regarded in World War One, but it's also the case that during World War One the American Red Cross rapidly became an Allied deal.

As an "Allied deal", as I've put it, it provided a lot of emergency services that went far beyond the battlefield.  Much of what it did was of the classic Red Cross type of thing, but far beyond that.  It ran hospitals and distributed food and the like all over France and Italy.  But as the war progressed, what it came to do, while in keeping with its traditional role, became what we'd have to regard as partisan.

 Interior of operating room. American Red Cross Evacuation Hospital No. 110, Coincy, France

The Red Cross came to provide an ambulance and hospital service that existed very much in a military support role.  Red Cross ambulance drivers, all male, wore military uniforms and many, but not all, of the men who volunteered for that duty saw it as volunteering for a type of military service prior to the United States having entered the war.  Indeed, Ernest Hemingway's famous "military service" was actually Red Cross service as an ambulance driver in Italy, a role in which he was wounded.

A uniformed Red Cross ambulance driver, Ernest Hemingway.  In this uniform Hemingway's appearance would have been very close to that of an officer in an Allied army, even though he was not an officer nor even a soldier.

When the U.S. entered the war the line between the American Red Cross as a humanitarian organization and the American Red Cross as a auxiliary of the medical corps of the U.S. Army became highly blurred and then actually, to an extent, ceased to exist altogether.  Given the delay in building up the U.S. military going towards the war, there was no earthly way that the services could build a medical corps of sufficient size to handle the vastly expanded military.  The American Red Cross, however, was there in place, and in fact, in France and Italy. So they were partially incorporated into the Army.

 American Red Cross Advance Dressing Station. Major Franciscolin, 109th Inf. 28th Division in charge, assisted by Lt. Powell Leighton, A.R.C. attached to the 28th Div. Near St. Gilles, France. Aug. 15, 1918

But only partially.  Male members of the Red Cross were given the option of entering the Army in their existing roles at a rank assigned to them by the Army, and by and large they did.  They didn't have to, however, and some chose not to.  Nurses remained outside of the Army and stayed in their existing roles in what were now Army medical facilities.

Having said that, however, that only addresses the medical support roles taken on by the American Red Cross during the war.  Other roles also existed.  Simply providing comfort, often in the form of canteens or mobile canteens (i.e., coffee and donuts) was a role that, while not exactly major, was often fondly remembered post war.  Back in the U.S., the Red Cross undertook a serviceman and family support role that would be of the type that would be undertaken by the United Service Organizations (USO) during World War Two and beyond.  

The ARC also retained a humanitarian relief role that went far beyond the areas where the US military operated, attempting to provide humanitarian relief in the Middle East, Asia and Russia.  

In the end, it's difficult to actually define what the American Red Cross did during the war, as it was so vast in nature.  Some of it very closely mirrored what it does today.  Some of it anticipated the USO of later wars.  Some of it was in the nature of direct medical support to the Allied war effort.  It's role proved key in many ways to that effort, and its hard to imagine an Allied war effort without it.

The role of the American Red Cross was mirrored by the Red Cross organizations of other nations.  The International Committee of the Red Cross occupied a cross border humanitarian role much like it would during World War Two, not taking any sides in the war and attempting to provide relief where it could.  The German Red Cross trained nurses for the German military.  British and Canadian Red Cross organizations filled a role much like that of that of the American Red Cross and were augmented by national nursing organizations that were outside of the Red Cross but much like it.

Which takes us to the YMCA.

The Young Men's Christian Association and the Young Women's Christian Association.

The YMCA?

YMCA "girl" depicted in a common YMCA role during the war, providing coffee and reading materials to the soldier, something that the YMCA did to a vast degree during World War One.

Yes, the Young Mans Christian Association..

The YMCA, contrary to the way people commonly imagine it, is actually a religion.  A branch of the Protestant Christian religions, the YMCA and its companion the YWCA came up during the Muscular Christianity movement we've discussed elsewhere.  It's history actually dates back to 1844 when it was founded in London, England, "to provide low-cost housing in a safe Christian environment for rural young men and women journeying to the cities."  This concern was not without a foundation as the mass influx of rural youth into European industrial cities did indeed exhibit a major corrupting aspect to it.*

Given the lack of service organizations that aided and supported soldiers prior to World War Two, it shouldn't surprise us, even though it tends to, that the YMCA started filling this role fairly early. There are some instances in the United States of it taking this role as early as the Civil War, but it really commenced them in a dedicated fashion during the Spanish American War.  So it should be no surprise that it stepped up to the plate again during World War One.

During the Great War the YMCA took up its service organization role in spades, occupying a role that again would be occupied by the USO during World War Two.  Like the Red Cross, it provided aid and comfort to soldiers serving in the war in the form of what we'd regard as canteens.  It also undertook to provide entertainment, assistance with writing letters (in an era in which the literacy rates were not as high as they'd later be.

YWCA poster urging young women to work in the factories and fields during the war.

The YMCA also took a direct role in recruiting women for war work during the Great War, associating itself with Womens' Land Armies in the agricultural sector and in recruiting women to industrial work.  In this, it somewhat ironically was in the situation of encouraging the very type of thing that it originally was formed to address, in that the Land Armies and the industrial work took young women out of their homes and into urban environments.

The YMCA and the YWCA were Protestant organizations, of course.  Given that, it's not surprising that we'd find the major Catholic organization in the US also involved in the war effort, that being the Knights of Columbus.

The Knights of Columbus

Or maybe it is surprising.  It cannot be fairly stated that there is a religious element to World War One.  All the warring nations in Europe were Christian nations. And confessionaly we would find that there were Protestant and Catholic nations on both sides, more or less.  The United Kingdom, at that time comprised of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland, and therefore was the home of two of two official Protestant faiths and one large unofficial Catholic one.  Germany was likewise split between Lutheran based Protestantism (it's somewhat more complicated than might be imagined in that area) and Catholicism, although Protestantism was heavily favored by the German crown.  The Austrian Empire, on the other hand, was nearly uniformly Catholic save for some regions that were Orthodox.  Italy was uniformly Catholic.  France was a Catholic country in culture and in faith although the French governments had been aggressively secular for a long time.  Imperial Russia was officially Orthodox but it had, on its western fringes, a large Catholic population.  The United States had no official religion at all, but had a majority Protestant population with a large Catholic minority (and of course minorities in additional Orthodox and Jewish populations).

The Knights of Columbus taking convalescing wounded on a tour of Washington, D.C.

Nonetheless, and particularly for countries like the United States and Canada (and the United Kingdom), confessional differences were very real and there was a real concern that minority Catholic soldiers in the US (and Canadian) armies would not have support facilities that reflected their faith.  The Knights of Columbus stepped up to the plate.

Indeed, the Knights were active prior to the United States entering the war.  They'd become involved early due to the concern noted above for Canadian soldiers.  This followed with the organization organizing support facilities for Catholic National Guardsmen who were mobilized to serve on the Mexican border during the Punitive Expedition.  So the organization had a head start for the American involvement in the Great War.

The role played by the Knights was similar to that played by the YMCA and the Red Cross in terms of rear area support.

The National Civil Federation

The National Civil Federation was a business organization that was founded in 1900 as a business organization dedicated towards working to resolve labor disputes.  Gigantic labor disputes have become so rare in the United States over the years that we've forgotten they even existed in the form that they once did. We've seen some of that story here, but suffice it to say they could be quite extreme in comparison to what we've seen for the past several decades.

 

The National Civil Foundation and the American Red Cross together formed the wartime National League for Women's Service which contributed the Women's Motor Corps to the war effort.  Perhaps the Women's Motor Corps is what it is best remembered for in the Great War context.

The WMC wasn't the only thing the National Civil Foundation did during the Great War, however.  It also operated domestic support facilities for soldiers.

Youth Organizations

The Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts rather obviously contributed to the war effort through various efforts, including patriotic displays.  Both organizations, which we've discussed before, had martial origins in addition to being party of the Muscular Christianity movement.  That martial origin was particularly evident with the Boys Scouts which, as earlier noted, had a heavily military appearance at the time.

J. C. Leyendecker poster noting the Boy Scout's support of the Third Liberty Loan.

Some of this would repeat during World War Two, but not nearly to the extent that had been seen in World War One.  The Red Cross was of course highly active.  Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts reprized their earlier role.  But by World War Two the Army itself was prepared to take on the medical role that had fallen to the Red Cross and much of the home front support came from a new organization, the United Service Organization, which still exists.

It's interesting in that its a missed part of the Great War in a way.  World War Two, particularly in the United States, grossly overshadows the story of World War One so the huge civilian mobilization that the first war had seen has largely been lost in the mists.  But it says something about the war itself.  There were those who avoided it, to be sure, but the extent to which the civilian population self mobilized is truly remarkable.

___________________________________________________________________________________

*This strays way off topic, but the corrosive influence of large cities had long been noted and indeed was observed to be a primary facdtor in the destruction of democracies by Thomas Jefferson, who felt that large cities always gave rise to mobs and always ended up destroying democracies.  Indeed, in his writings he felt that the American democracy would ultimately fall prey to that fate and that it could only be staved off so long as most Americans were Yeomen Farmers.

The same factors noted by the founders of the YMCA and the YWCA lead to the formation of a
German Catholic organization with the same (male) focus, but whose name I unfortunately cannot now recall.  It also lead to a vareitiy of movements that sought to address or even redirect the forcdes that were in play.

A victory against the Turks . . . and the Flu spreads. Casper Daily Tribune, September 21, 1918.

Wadi Fara, Palestine, 21 September 1918

Surveying Early America

Holscher's Hub: One of the old ones.

Holscher's Hub: One of the old ones.:

Spotted on an intersection, I have no idea what the actual model is.  Something from the 1930s, I think.

When the Kavanaugh hearings began, we predicted it'd be a circus. . .

but not of the epic nature it is now taking on.

This is all due, of course, to the late breaking release of information by Ms. Ford, who claims that she was assaulted at a high school party by Kavanaugh when they were both of high school age (assault doesn't have to mean sexual assault for purposes of a discussion such as this).  He denies it.  Mark Judge was a third party she alleged to have been in the room and more or less part of the assault, but he denies recalling that.

In the current atmosphere, of course, a mere accusation is enough to derail a nomination and there is, therefore, sufficient reason to be suspicious of such claims for that reason.  In this case, the information was apparently transmitted to Diane Feinstein weeks ago who sat on it until after the first round of hearings, which is really odd.

To compound the oddity, there were demands by Democrats that a vote on the nomination be delayed until the matter could be looked into, not a wholly unreasonable request but one that at the same time inevitably smacks of being a political calculation.  A delay would effectively push things back for weeks and maybe bast the current Senatorial term.  Republicans naturally rejected that, but in response they agreed to hear from the accuser and the accused in a session this week, which his a pretty reasonable reply.

Up until now the accuser appeared to be quite credible in and of herself, just as the accused does (and hence the problem of what to do), but faced with the option of appearing and testifying she elected not to and declared she would not until the FBI investigated the matter.

Now, this may play well in the general population, or some sections of it, but the FBI doesn't investigate crimes like this at all.  I guess the FBI may investigate the backgrounds of Supreme Court nominees, that makes sense to me, but the claims that she made are in the nature of a state matter.  So if you went to the authorities wit them, you'd go to your local police.  It's pretty obvious, of course, that most local police are not going to be thrilled investigating a matter like this decades after it has alleged to have occurred, but some will.  Indeed, in recent years quite a few have been willing to do so.

Be that as it may, investigating this type of scenario so many years later is almost a lost cause.  A hearing in the Senate committee actually makes more sense as it gives the Senators the chance to weigh the credibility of the witnesses and at least some Republican Senators indicated they would in fact be willing to do just that.  Be that as it may, only Kavanaugh's supporters stepped forward.  That places the credibility of the accuser back on trial, more or less, simply because refusing to support your story in testimony indicates a certain lack of credibility.

Since that time, a classmate of the accuser apparently tweeted, the most dreaded form of communication, that she recalled hearing about the incident at their school where she claimed it was a topic of conversation for weeks thereafter.  One other supporter of the accuser has said she doesn't recall any conversations about it and the accuser herself says she didn't tell anyone about it (which wouldn't have meant that information might not have gotten out somehow).  If it was a hot topic, as the Tweeter stated, you'd have think others would recall it, but instead the Tweeter has indicated she will not give interviews and she took her tweet down, which suggests a certain lack of credibility as to the tweet. 

The Huffington Post, which I can't stand, actually came up with a good idea, amazingly, in regards to all of this, which is to subpoena Mark Young in to testify.  They can do that and they should.  Going beyond that, they also ought to subpoena in Ms. Ford to testify at this point. She's gone public with her comments and therefore should be willing to present testimony about them in this fashion, FBI investigation or no.  For that matter, quite frankly, Diane Feinstein ought to be sworn in so that the circumstances of her acquiring, and then withholding, information can be learned.

But none of that will occur.

Informing

My job is to inform, not to convince.

St. Bernadette Soubirous

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Australian Corps Assaults the O...

Roads to the Great War: 100 Years Ago: The Australian Corps Assaults the O...: An Australian Lewis Gun Team in Péronne After the capture of Mont St. Quentin and Péronne, depleted Australian divisions continued...

The Casper Record: The Spanish Flu appears on the first page. September 19, 1918.

World War One was making most of the headlines, but another global disaster that would take millions of lives was making its appearance.  The Spanish Flu was now on Casper's front page.

The German Government Complains about Shotguns. September 19, 1918.

Sailors in Vera Cruz in 1914. The sailor on the far right is armed with a shotgun, and that shotgun is probably the Model 1897.  If it is, it's a long barreled, rather than the short barreled version used by the Army in World War One and World War Two.

After having shelled Paris with a giant inaccurate railroad gun, or rather series of guns, and after having introduced flame throwers, unrestricted submarine warfare and aerial bombing over cities, the Germans complained about the American use of shotguns in the trenches.

The complaint was presented by the Swiss government on behalf of the German government.

The German Government protests against the use of shotguns by the American Army and calls attention to the fact that according to the law of war (Kriegsrecht) every prisoner found to have in his possession such guns or ammunition belonging thereto forfeits his life. This protest is based upon article 23(e) of the Hague convention respecting the laws and customs of war on land. Reply by cable is required before October 1, 1918.

This followed the capture by the Germans of two American soldiers carrying shotguns.

We note that the Germans were, by this point in the war, using submachineguns in the form of the MP18.

Confederate cavalryman armed with what appears to be a double barrel 10 gauge shotgun, a fairly common weapons for mounted Confederate troops during the Civil War.

American troops had carried shotguns in combat at least as early as the American Civil War, when they were particularly popular with Confederate cavalrymen.  The US had introduced the pump action Winchester Model 1897, a John Browning designed hammered shotgun, in 1900 as a weapon suitable for combat in the Philippines.  The M1897 remained in use by the Army and Marine Corps from that point forward to World War One, when it was overhauled a bit to eclectically be retrofitted to take a bayonet, a dubious attachment for a shotgun.  Nonetheless, the weapon was very sell suited for trench conditions and Americans, who were perhaps more familiar with the day to day use of shotguns than other peoples, put it to good close quarter use along with the numerous handguns that were issued to American servicemen and, unofficially, a few light semi automatic rifles.

So it wasn't a novel weapon to Americans.

It might have been to Germans, who were familiar with shotguns, of course, but who no doubt associated them with double barred sporting models.  The Winchester shotgun was in fact primarily a sporting model, but with a large tubular magazine, it's capacity was over double that of any double barreled shotgun.  Moreover, in the United States shotguns had taken a different path in general than they had in Europe.  Going back to the 18th Century they were largely identical, but in the 19th Century Americans had retained them for big game hunting in the East and Midwest.

Indeed, in the 18th Century there were already fowling pieces, smooth bore weapons that were specifically designed for hunting birds.  These actually were fairly close in design in some ways to military muskets, which were also smoothbore weapons.  Indeed, one of the feature s of muskets was that soldiers frequently used shot, rather than balls, in them.  "Buck and Ball" was a common load for close quarter fighting and is part of what made muskets a deadly weapons.  Buck and Ball was a ball loaded on top of shot, which effectively made a musket into a large bore shotgun in that application, something absolutely devastating at close quarters.

Muskets had universal military use early on and rifles were actually fairly rare.  Infantry carried muskets while artillerymen and cavalrymen carried musketoons, short muskets. Cavalry musketoons, moreover, had permanent swinging attachments for their ramrods so that they could be loaded by a mounted man without the danger of the ramrod being lost.

The demise of military muskets was in site during the 1840s at which time the Rifle Musket started to come in. The Rifle Musket was a large caliber rifle with shallow lands and grooves, so it could fill the role of both the rifle and the musket.  Very quickly armies quit issuing shot for buck and ball loads and the Rifle Musket, which featured adequate long range accuracy, soon was a much more rapidly loaded muzzle loading rifle which replaced muskets in armies that could afford to replace muskets. Retention of muskets at this point indicated a certain species of military poverty.

By the American Civil War muskets were very much on the way out, but shotguns oddly were on their way in.  In Confederate use they supplanted musketoons, which were still in use in both armies at the start of the war.  Being little different in practical terms, a big shotgun, such as a 10 Gauge, was at least as effective as a muskettoon and had the advantage of having two barrels.

Also by that time, muskets and shotguns had seen a fair amount of big game use in North America, a feature of frontier conditions and geography.  In Europe, however, rifles took over early for hunting big game, which is not to say that they didn't see that use in North America as well.  As muskets yielded to rifles in North America, big shotguns took their place in some big game applications in densely wooded areas of the continent.  They are still used in that application today.

Woman posing with a long barreled Winchester Model 1897 12 gauge shotgun.

Therefore a more utilitarian shotgun became pretty common in North America.  That shotgun was designed for bird hunting, but designers knew that some would also be used for big game hunting. And, additionally, as people were familiar with the use of shotguns for big game, they knew that they could be used for other large targets as well, such as personal protection.  The term "riding shotgun" came from that, with stage guards using shotguns, as anything they might encounter, they were likely to encounter at short desperate range.

So a military use was fairly obvious to the American military. But it was apparently an unwelcome surprise to the Germans.

The Army dutifully studied the issue and a lengthy memorandum on the topic resulted by a General Ansell, who examined the complaint, and in the end concluded that; "The complaint is without merit".

United States Secretary of War Lansing then replied to the Germans:

The . . . provision of the Hague convention, cited in the protest does not . . . forbid the use of this. . weapon. . . [I]n view of the history of the shotgun as a weapon of warfare and in view of the well known effects of its present use, and in light of a comparison of it with other weapons approved in warfare, the shotgun . . . cannot be the subject of legitimate or reasonable protest.. . . . 

The Government of the United States notes the threat of the German Government to execute every prisoner of war found to have in his possession shotguns or shotgun ammunition. Inasmuch as the weapon is lawful and may be rightfully used, its use will not be abandoned by the American Army . . . [I]f the German Government should carry out its threat in a single instance, it will be the right and duty of the . . . United States to make such reprisals as will best protect the American forces, and notice is hereby given of the intention of the . . . United States to make such reprisals.

By September 1918 the direction the war was going was pretty obvious. To think that the Germans would have complained about the use of shotguns is in and of itself pretty remarkable.  It's all the more amazing in light of the fact that by September 1918 the Americans were taking in a lot more Germans POWs than the Germans were taking in American POWs.

The Germans did not carry through with their threat.

And the US has kept using shotguns.  It still does.

Indeed, the M1897 carried on into World War Two, by which time it was quite obsolete. During the Second World War the US also added the Winchester Model 1897's civilian replacement to its stable, the Winchester Model 12, in the riot gun configuration.  Model 12s carried on in service virtually forever, but in recent years various other shotgun models have been added.  The military shotgun is a uniquely American weapon, and its stuck around.

Camp Custer, Michigan. September 19, 1918.

Depot Brigade Recruit Camp with 1500 tents

Base Hospital.

Mid Week at Work: “Girls deliver ice. Heavy work that formerly belonged to men only is being done by girls. The ice girls are delivering ice on a route and their work requires brawn as well as the patriotic ambition to help.” 9/16/1918

Those top two shelves of the secretary.

And more fall.

The Cheyenne Tribune Eagle, one of the state's largest newspapers, is no longer publishing a Monday edition.

The paper isn't as big as the diminishing Tribune, but at one time its predecessor was one of the largest papers in the state.  Now, it can't muster up a Monday issue. Granted, Monday issues in newspapers have long been the smallest of the week but. . . one more straw.

That might boost the fortunes of the Casper Star Tribune a bit, as it still  has a Monday issue and chances are its Monday issue hits the stands before a single paper is delivered in Casper, given that it's printed in Cheyenne now.

But on a slightly wider front, it's notable that the CST is a Lee Enterprises paper and that same entity owns The Missoula Independent.  It just closed it.

Missoula is a city with a population of about 73,000, making it roughly the same size as Casper.  The Independent was one of two papers in the town, so its closure isn't that surprising.  Of course, Lee owns two papers in Casper. . . .

The Kavanaugh Nomination: What to do with accusations of past bad acts.

Eugene Vidocq, who lived an exemplary life after an early one as a thief and whom Jean Valjean was based upon.

Kavanaugh will not wreck the Constitution, as we just noted, but that doesn't mean he should be a Supreme Court justice.

Particularly if there's something heinous in his past that disqualifies him.

But is there?

Well, we don't really know, but he has been accused of something and that is something is pretty bad.

Christine Blasey Ford, now a research psychologist, has alleged that when she was in her teenage years she was at a party in which Brett Kavanaugh and Mark Judge Young locked in her a room and, while they were heavily drunk, groped her and maybe tried to do worse.

Now, Kavanaugh, who has undeniably lead an honorable adult life, absolutely denies it as does Mark Judge Young.  Ford absolutely maintains its true.  There's nothing strongly about Ford that would in any way cause us to doubt her (except perhaps her profession, I hate to say that but psychology is not a reliable field and frankly psychologist aren't always either). And all of the things that people tend to point out as problematic are frankly associated with any crime that's revealed years and years later, including the lack of recollection of details.

So we're down, really, to two people saying it didn't happen and one saying it did.  That leaves us with the situation of either Kavanaugh lying or Ford lying.  Somebody is (it may not be Young, he is a self confessed alcoholic who was in his teenage years and he might genuinely not recall if anything happened).

Added to this are some really uncomfortable truths.

One is that these nominations have become so problematic that it's now the case that people will make stuff up to stop one.  Am I saying that Ford did. No, I'm not.  Diane Feinstein did hold this information from July until September, which is problematic, but that's not Ford's fault.

Still, its a reality we have to consider.

Over the past couple of years we've seen the Me Too Movement really break out. By and large that's been a good thing, although I've repeatedly thought that the movement has been tainted by a strained attempt to create out of whole cloth a "new standard" which in fact is the old Christian standard that became so passe post 1970.  At any rate, the resurrection of that old standard, which is the reality of it, has been a good thing.

But it has also mean that the door has really been thrown wide open to false accusations, and they do happen.

Indeed, at this point, nearly every man in any position of authority is open to the accusation as its easy to make and hard to disprove.  Merely making the accusation does the damage, and sometimes people seek to do that damage for their own aims, which are sometimes political.  If this hasn't happened to date, it will at some point.

Additionally, we have the really uncomfortable question of what point can there be, and when can there be in general, a societal statute of limitations on some acts, no matter how horrible they are.

On this, I don't mean a criminal statute of limitations.  Contrary to what a lot of press reports have been saying, it is not necessarily the case that these acts are past the statute of limitations.  Not all states have statutes of limitations on criminal acts. Wyoming, for example, does not.  So perhaps, if this occurred, its prosecutable.  I have no idea.

No, I'm asking a wider question of at what point does society have to forgive, or should it forgive?

What about Jean Valjean?

People are aware, of course, of the protagonist of Victor Hugo's novel Les Miserables, but rarely do they consider the figure in context.  Valjean is a thief who reforms and goes on to be virtuous.

Indeed, such examples are not rare, and Valjean himself was based on a real figure, Eugene Vidocq, who had done just that.  Many others could be found, including some who went on not only to lead saintly lives, but to be actual Saints.  Indeed the first man that Christs affirmatively relates will join him in Heaven was such a person, the penitent thief who was also being crucified.

Russian Orthodox Icon, the Good Thief In Paradise.

None of which means that such individuals need to be forgiven by society, or that they need to be forgiven when they have lived an exemplary life and seek to obtain high office.  

Or maybe it actually does.  Vidocq, noted above, did just that, becoming an important figure in his own time and in his own society.  Plenty of other examples could be found.

Of course, Kavanaugh is accused of attempted rape, which is different.  Or maybe he isn't. And that's part of the problem.

The claimed events are related to have occurred at a prep school party at some undetermined point in the 1980s about which many details have forgotten.  Ford represents she was wearing clothes and a swimsuit underneath it and she claims that Kavanaugh, with Young aiding, basically, groped her and attempted worse.  But did they?

What they may have done is engaged in some really horrific groping activity that frankly wouldn't have been all that unusual in that setting at that time, which is disgusting in and of itself.  But should that bar a person in more mature years?  Well, even that's hard to know as we don't know if that was their intent alone, or if they were after more.  We never will, just as we don't even know if it really occurred.  Indeed, given as alcohol seems to have been an element of all of this, we don't know that something didn't occur, but that others may have been involved instead.  There are enough details that we can believe any story we care to out of this, which means that nobody except perhaps those directly involved know the truth.

Leaping back for a second, if it did occur, then the honorable thing to do at this point would be for Kavanaugh to explain it and publicly repent.  That he's not doing that would suggest that, give the balance of his life, it didn't happen.  Or maybe it did and he lying.  On the latter, in the current atmosphere, it's unlikely that he'd be forgiven publicly, after all.  Still, living with the lie would be horrific.

Although somebody is doing just that with the Clarence Thomas matter, which had the same elements, but in a less violent form.

Indeed, another uncomfortable aspect of all of this is that we tend to look at the sensationalized past and ignore the reformed present.

I don't want to go into it deeply, as it would appear to send the wrong message, but one of the things that came out of the recent grand jury release in Pennsylvania about sexual accusations against Catholic clerics is that past 2002 there had been two.  In other words, the evidence on the events strongly indicates that the Church got its act together and these incidents have largely ceased. That's a success story, but it's been wholly ignored.  It probably shouldn't be, no matter what other lessons can be learned.

If that can be true about an institution, it can be about an individual as well, and that's the pleasing and uncomfortable truth about a huge section of society. Like it or not, there are a lot of people with hideous early conduct of all types, and I mean all, that go on to exemplary lives later on.  If you know them personally, and I know some people like that, you wouldn't have wanted their early lives to rise up to crush them in later life.  Conversely, and not as focused on now, but at one time in the past very much focused on, some with exemplary lives go on to collapse with success.  Indeed, both are very common.  

So, no answers.  The drama will go on, and Kavanaugh will likely be confirmed, but somebody has lied and Kavanaugh will have to bear the public ruin of his reputation forever, probably.

Which brings me to one final thing.

As odd as this may seem, and it really says nothing about any of the parties in this directly, its time that we stop nominating people for high office with prep school and Ivy League educations.  I know I've said that repeatedly, but the entire country has really good education and we've managed to go from a more open court, in terms of those eligible, to a less open one.  The whole atmosphere of the alleged party incident reads like something out of some stupid prep school drama, and we can forego and should forgo that class for awhile.  Not perhaps as to Kavanaugh, but to whomever is next.  Why can't a nominee be out of a public school in New Jersey or Kansas, etc., for a change?

The Kavanaugh Nomination. "Wrecking the Constitution"

The New York Times reached the acme of liberal hypocrisy and panic when it ran an op ed by one of its regular columnist declaring that Brett Kavanaugh would "wreck" the Constitution.

By which they mean apply it as written.

A good argument can already be made that the Constitution is heavily damaged, if not wrecked, by a string of liberal justices that have contempt for the law as written.  The Constitution was not meant to be a "living" document with its life breath only being liberal causes.  It wasn't meant to be a conservative one either.  It was meant to be a law. The Supreme law of the land, but a law none the less.  It no more has a penumbra or is subject to sweeping evolution than your local traffic ordinances are.

Indeed, people would regard a judge who held that a 30 mph speed limit was now a 40 mph speed limit as cars had evolved and therefore social concepts of speed. Or, perhaps more accurately, people would be horrified by a judge declaring that a 30 mph speed limit caused the judge to find that nobody could drive at all, as evolving social norms are headed towards less driving and the use of automobiles is dangerous to the planet.  People might think those things, but we all know that if the law says the speed is 30 mph, that's what it is. For the most part interpreting the Constitution is only slightly more difficult than that.

But for decades now a liberal tilt on the court has allowed the justices of the Supreme Court to simply make up law when they chose, and they've come very near wiping out spelled out Constitutional rights that don't fit the liberal world view. That's trampling on the Constitution, and at some point an instrument that's trampled on enough is wrecked by the foot traffic.

Liberal politicians know that Kavanaugh is likely to return the court to where it has not been for decades. . . five justices who will read and apply the law whether they like it or not, and leave it up to the voters to change the law if they don't like it.  Liberals fear that as they have general contempt for the electorate and would prefer that law be imposed by a learned liberal band.

The irony of all of this is that a written Constitution itself came out of just such a scenario.  The drafters of the Constitution had historical experience and memory of the recent period of English politics in which the unwritten English constitution was changed by fiat.  Henry VIII had put the English church into schism due the church's denial of his aim to dump his wife, deciding the religious fate of an entire nation without the common man's vote.  That would change again and again over the next few decades leaving a situation in which the rights of religious minorities would be totally repressed even to the point that the adherents of the original Faith were lucky to be regarded as third class citizens.  The framers wanted a democracy, but they wanted a governing law that covered as much of its powers as possible and purposely decreed that the states, to which they were reserving the balance of power, must do the same.  The hope was that a written constitution, unlike the vague British concept of an unwritten constitution, might better hold up to the times.  It generally has.

But it hasn't perfectly.  There have been a lot of things that liberal politicians have found that people oppose, and some specifically spelled out rights that people support, that they disdain.  Therefore they've come to vest their trust not in the people, and not in the legislatures, but in the court, which they've heavily influenced over the years.

Now they fear that the court might revert to its actual role.

They shouldn't, as at some point a dictatorial court, and there could be a right wing one, politically, just as easily as a left wing, can turn around and oppress you.  And that's worth recalling.

The Lord Protector Oliver Cromwell, a progressive beacon in his day and a real bad guy. And, in temperament, the sort of judge that Schumer and his pals would advocate for, even though they don't realize it.

The Big Picture: Cleveland Police Department, Cleveland, Ohio. (date entered as September 17, 19__, copyright deposit September 20, 1918).

Tweet

Folks who stop in here might be noting that there's a new item on the bottom right. . . our Twitter feed.

Frankly, if you stop in here there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to check our Twitter.  For the most part it just links to here, and you have to actually stop in here to read whatever we've posted.

As that note probably makes plain, Twitter isn't really my deal.  I don't get it quite frankly.  But at some point it became common for blogs to have one, so we do.

So if Twitter is your deal, I guess you can like our twitter page and then when we tweet you can note it, and link back to here, if you like.  Or not, if you don't.

Seeing the common threads

Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time (Sunday, September 16, 2018).
Lectionary: 131

Reading 1 Is 50:5-9a

The Lord GOD opens my ear that I may hear;
and I have not rebelled,
have not turned back.
I gave my back to those who beat me,
my cheeks to those who plucked my beard;
my face I did not shield
from buffets and spitting.

The Lord GOD is my help,
therefore I am not disgraced;
I have set my face like flint,
knowing that I shall not be put to shame.
He is near who upholds my right;
if anyone wishes to oppose me,
let us appear together.
Who disputes my right?
Let that man confront me.
See, the Lord GOD is my help;
who will prove me wrong?

Responsorial Psalm Ps 116:1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 8-9

R. (9) I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
or:
R. Alleluia.
I love the LORD because he has heard
my voice in supplication,
because he has inclined his ear to me
the day I called.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
or:
R. Alleluia.
The cords of death encompassed me;
the snares of the netherworld seized upon me;
I fell into distress and sorrow,
and I called upon the name of the LORD,
"O LORD, save my life!"
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
or:
R. Alleluia.
Gracious is the LORD and just;
yes, our God is merciful.
The LORD keeps the little ones;
I was brought low, and he saved me.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
or:
R. Alleluia.
For he has freed my soul from death,
my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling.
I shall walk before the Lord
in the land of the living.
R. I will walk before the Lord, in the land of the living.
or:
R. Alleluia.

Reading 2 Jas 2:14-18

What good is it, my brothers and sisters,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
Can that faith save him?
If a brother or sister has nothing to wear
and has no food for the day,
and one of you says to them,
"Go in peace, keep warm, and eat well, "
but you do not give them the necessities of the body,
what good is it?
So also faith of itself,
if it does not have works, is dead.

Indeed someone might say,
"You have faith and I have works."
Demonstrate your faith to me without works,
and I will demonstrate my faith to you from my works.

Alleluia Gal 6:14

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
May I never boast except in the cross of our Lord
through which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.

Gospel Mk 8:27-35

Jesus and his disciples set out
for the villages of Caesarea Philippi.
Along the way he asked his disciples,
"Who do people say that I am?"
They said in reply,
"John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others one of the prophets."
And he asked them,
"But who do you say that I am?"
Peter said to him in reply,
"You are the Christ."
Then he warned them not to tell anyone about him.

He began to teach them
that the Son of Man must suffer greatly
and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes,
and be killed, and rise after three days.
He spoke this openly.
Then Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
At this he turned around and, looking at his disciples,
rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan.
You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do."

He summoned the crowd with his disciples and said to them,
"Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself,
take up his cross, and follow me.
For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it,
but whoever loses his life for my sake
and that of the gospel will save it."

Sunday Morning Scene: Churches of the West: Japanese Church of Christ, Salt Lake City Utah

Churches of the West: Japanese Church of Christ, Salt Lake City Utah:

This is the Japanese Church of Christ in Salt Lake City,. This is a Presbyterian and United Church of Christ church in what was formerly "Japantown" in Salt Lake City. The church was built in 1924.

The Best Posts of the Week of September 9, 2018.

The American Serviceman During World War One: They were older than you think.

The 2018 Wyoming Election Volume Five: On To The General Election.

The 100 Days: The American Army offensive at Saint Mihiel. September 12, 1918.

Mid Week At Work: How to Retire in Your 30s With $1 Million in the Bank

The U.S. 2nd Cavalry conducts a cavalry attack, September 13, 1918.

The M1918 Browning Automatic Rifle used in action for the first time. September 13, 1918.

2nd Lt. Val Browning, son of John Browning, the legendary firearms designer. By the wars end three out of four of the standard small arms weapons in the infantry would be Browning designs.

Hardcore Conservatives and the Wyoming Electorate. Getting things completely wrong.

 

Camouflage make-up tutorial. Why? Well its hunting season, that's why.

Friday Farming: DELCO Farm Lighting Installation & Service 1918 Film

Hardcore Conservatives and the Wyoming Electorate. Getting things completely wrong.

Wyoming's first elected Democratic Governor, John E. Osborne, who was elected in the wake of the Johnson County War scandal.  Osborne would contend again in later years, including during World War One.  His rise due to a land and money issue is telling and echoes to the present day.

I was just going to update the existing blog topic on the Wyoming election with this, but instead, rather than clutter that up any more than it already is, I thought I'd just do this one as a new election issue post. (Actually I started this post some time ago).

There's a pile of crying and whining right now by "conservatives" about how the Democrats ruined the GOP primary by registering to vote in it as Republicans late in the day, thereby throwing the election from True Blue (um Red?) Conservative Foster Friess to that secret liberal Mark Gordon.  We now know, of course, thanks to some analysis down at the University of Wyoming, that this isn't actually correct. We posted on that the other day:

September 12, 2018.  The election wasn't stolen edition.
From University of Wyoming Senior Research Scientist Brian Harnisch's Twitter feed, and as followed up on by the Casper Star Tribune:  

Sure doesn't look like "Democrats meddled" in the Wyoming Republican primary. Instead - A few Democrats, more independents, and even more Republicans wanted a say in who governor will (or won't) be. #wyvote 

Brian Harnisch‏ @BrianHarnisch Sep 10 

Well, perhaps in some really concentrated in time way of looking at things there might have been a little bit of truth to that such that it could have been believed, but perhaps not as well.  And now we know it isn't correct.  While it might be true that some people who have of late been registered as Democrats and, moreover as Independents, moved to the GOP to vote for the primary the truth of the matter is that in the long view of Wyoming politics what this really does is tend to return to the GOP its members who were usually there and, at the same time, make the fortunes of the Democratic Party, as an institution, even worse.  Indeed, now we know that the primary simply brought out Republican voters who were previously staying away from the polls, and that's hugely significant.

The entire concept that Friess would have won but for late Democratic switchers is highly flawed in every sense. Wyoming doesn't really have that many Democratic voters anymore in the first instance and, while there were only 9,000 votes between Gordon and Friess in the general election, it was never safe to assume that 9,000 Democrats switched to vote for Gordon.  At most it appears that only 1,801 could have.

As we've already noted, what may have actually occurred is that Harriet Hageman ended up drawing the really  hardcore right wing of the GOP away from Friess. . . she certainly wasn't drawing that group away from Gordon, and that torpedoed Friess.  Friess, for his part, probably picked up some Galeotos voters when Galeotos' campaign was clearly imploding during the last few weeks.  For that matter, Gordon almost certainly picked up a lot of voters when Galeotos 1) played the "I"m going to help Trump card; and 2) imploded.  Voters who really like Trump, and I frankly think his popularity in Wyoming is grossly exaggerated, went to Friess at that point, while voters who are repelled by Trump, which includes a lot of rank and file Republicans, moved to Gordon.  In the meantime, dormant Republicans, who were never of the Tea Party type, came back to the polls and didn't want the extremism that some of the GOP candidates were offering up, or the Southern style conservatism that others were offering.

So the entire "my election was stolen" crying and whining by some hard right Republicans was always pretty devoid of evidence.

In the long and short historical view, a better argument is that the GOP was stolen by well monied tea party elements and now the original owners of the party returned and whuped up on the thieves.

And that's because Wyoming isn't a conservative state.

Not one like that.

Some of this point would be better informed by anyone who cares to read it, if I had first published a thread on Wyoming's voting demographics that I haven't gotten around to pushing yet, but as this post is now topical, I'll just try to make some sense of it here.  But if Wyoming's voting history is looked at, there's never been a point when its been conservative in the "look, I have a red sign" category.  All politics is local, we're told, but Wyoming's is more local than most.

Indeed, localism, informed by a sort of regional agrarianism, is really the them of Wyoming politics.  Wyomingites are conceived of as conservative as they take a "leave me alone" approach to most things. But they aren't terribly conservative as to everything else.  Indeed, for people who have some strong social conservative views, and I frankly do, that's often a matter of frustration.

Joseph M. Carey, who had been a Republican but who ran as a Governor due to his disagreements with Francis E. Warren, and then went on to be one of the organizers of the Progressive Party.  Carey is the only Governor of Wyoming to have been a member of a third party.

And this is also the reason that Wyoming has had a lot of Democratic Governors including at least one spectacular example of a Republican who crossed to Democrat who crossed to Progressive Party, and went back to Republican, Joseph Carey.  If Wyoming has great governors, and there's a few who can be argued to be in that category, Carey is undoubtedly one of them.  So would Nellie Tayloe Ross be one, and of course she was a Democrat.  Most Wyomingites with a sense of history would include John B, Kendrick (Democrat) and Ed Herschler (Democrat) in that category.  Indeed, in the list of governors who would be considered really great governors of Wyoming, only Stan Hathaway really makes the list as a GOP example.  Some would include Francis E. Warren, also a Republican, as well.  But by the same token, at least one of our recent truly forgotten Republicans was a conservative who somewhat foreshadowed at least one of the candidates who took a run at the office this past year and whom probably nobody would regard as a great governor.

John B. Kendrick, who followed Carey as Governor.

The fact that there's been so many Democratic governors in a state that's been overwhelmingly Republican since day one really says something.  And it would have said something, potentially, had Friess won, and in my view certainly would have said something if Hageman had won, this cycle, as Throne may have, or would have, become the next governor under those scenarios.  Gordon taking the GOP nomination means that Throne likely can't win, as most voters will go to him.

Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross. Ross was bizarrely called in as example by one obviously historically clueless Harriet Hageman supporter this last election.  Ross was a Democrat and went on to be the Director of Mints for Franklin Roosevelt.

But most Wyoming voters aren't Tea Party types and aren't exactly what really hardcore conservatives think they are.  Indeed, on some social issues Wyomingites have consistently been in the center left, which a candidate like Friess really isn't grasping.

Courthouse in Jefferson County Texas. When I was there a couple of years ago the general election was about to be held, which explains why all the signs are on the front lawn.  It was the first locality I was in which it seemed possible to me that Trump would actually win the general election, which came from listening to comments in the local Port Arthur Starbucks.  Foster Friess seemed to have a campaign that was aimed at Deep East Texas, not Wyoming.

The political ethos of Wyoming, from the native prospective, is basically "leave me the heck alone". This often gets mistaken for libertarianism, but it isn't that either.  Generally Wyomingites have a live and let live view of the world which doesn't equate to the liberal ethos of "tolerance" so much as it equates with "stay out of my business".

Highly respected Governor Ed Herschler, receiving a Stetson from F. E. Warren's cavalry recalling honor guard.

This is why it has so often been the case that both liberals and conservatives have badly misjudged Wyoming voters and why outsiders nearly always do.  Wyomingites tend to hold deeply conservative values on many things but don't feel that this really means that politics have much to do with any of that.

They also tend to be highly agrarian in an old sense that modern politicians have a really difficult time grasping.  This places them quite often on the hard left and hard right of various political questions all the time, which most Wyomingites do not feel is an inconsistent thing to do.

If we look at this in practical application, we see how this really tends to be missed by politicians and parties at anyone time.  Indeed, the political demographic that most Wyomingites tend to resemble, with one significant difference, is the Southern Yeoman class of the late 19th Century.  A fact not grasped at all by political demographers.

This past election gives us a good example of how all of this worked.

Two of the candidates were quite vocal about their religious faith, those being Hageman and Friess.  Friess is some sort of Evangelical Christian.  I don't know what Hageman's religious affiliation actually is and it was never apparent from her advertisements even though they cited a strong faith. 

Now, as I've noted before, I have a post in the hopper on demographics and the Wyoming electorate and it will address religion as a factor, so I'm not going to go into depth with that here, but what I will note is that Wyoming has historically and through out its history been one of the least religious states in the United States.  I'll go into that deeper later, but the reason that I'll note that is that religion tends to strongly inform two minority, but significant, Wyoming populations (Catholics and Mormons) but doesn't weigh heavily into the views of many others.

That doesn't mean that a lot of Wyomingites aren't religious, but what it does mean is that religion doesn't tend to enter politics in the same way that it does in other states.  And while most Wyomingites are Protestants, there isn't one dominant Protestant denomination in the state and never really has been.

St. Mark's Episcopal Cathedral, Laramie Wyoming.  There was a time during which the Episcopal Church could have been regarded as the most politically and civilly significant in Wyoming, but at the same time it was in the United States in general.  Even then, it did not dominate in the way that it did in other localities, although having said that there was a time when being Catholic in Wyoming meant hard economic times for professionals.  Today the fortunes of the Episcopal Church have enormously declined everywhere and that has reflected back to Wyoming. Casper, for example, has two separated Anglican churches in addition to the Episcopal churches.

And that's significant in that while Wyoming is conservative as a state, what this has tended to mean is that a sort of "none of your business" ethos creeps into a lot of social issues in Wyoming.  Politicians who tend to assume that social issue are hot button issues in the state tend to be wrong and this is even the case among some deeply religious voters.

The classic example of this is the topic of abortion.  I'll be perfectly frank that I am opposed to abortion and think it wrong in every sense. But in the Wyoming legislature this has never managed to be a really hot issue.  An ultrasound bill sponsored by Chuck Gray was successful in the recent legislative session but that's the first such bill to be passed into law in Wyoming in a very long time and may tend to reflect a national trend.  Having said that, this may in fact reflect a really significant change in views that may start to reflect itself in future legislators.  All of the Republican candidates for Governor were careful to state they were pro life, with Friess emphasizing it.  Barasso challenger Dodson was much cagier about his views, expressing the traditional weasel out words of being concerned for all the parties involved.

Previously a lot of Wyoming Republicans were very careful to state that they were opposed to abortion but didn't want to interfere with women's decisions, etc. etc., and similar positions held by Democrats have not hindered them from obtaining office in the past.  Again, I'm opposed to abortion personally and think it a real issue, but it has generally not been a major topic in Wyoming's politics.  I suspect that if Roe v. Wade were stricken or modified that Wyoming's law would reflect that, but I also feel that's part of a nationwide trend.  And I think that trend would express itself in Wyoming at this time, in that event.

Views on homosexuality have been more strongly held by Wyomingites but not in the way the national press would have it.  It's almost certain that most Wyomingites opposed the legalization of gay marriage when it was forced on the country by the United States Supreme Court but its much less certain what the state would do now. I think that if Obergefell were to be reversed Wyoming's old law would just pop back into place and the state would be comfortable with that and leave it as it is.  I also think that most Wyomingites resent on some level the Supreme Court simply overriding the state on an issue like this.

But when it comes down to homosexuality itself the state has long had a "just leave me alone on what you're doing" view.  Indeed, the huge irony of the entire Matthew Shepherd murder becoming a cause celebe is that Wyoming was actually highly tolerant towards homosexual conduct in that sense.  Nobody particularly cared much about it as long as you weren't being forced to approve of it, a common Wyoming view on almost everything.  The Shepherd murder has been grossly misinterpreted for political reason as an act of community violence against homosexuals when it was nothing of the sort whatsoever.  Roughly at the same time as the Shepherd matter I represented somebody in something where the opposing side sort of silently thought my client's open homosexuality was an issue and could never get more than a big yawn from everyone on the topic, the common Wyoming view.

The reaction of the state to something like Obergefell actually tend to reflect a bit of something else, however, which is the "you can't tell me what to do" view which is strongly held by Wyomingites. That, and our provincialism, explained our delay in making the national Martin Luther King Day a holiday here and our making it Equality Day when we did.  It wasn't that Wyomingites had something against Martin Luther King. Rather, and wrongly, they felt that he didn't have anything to do with us really, and so why were we being made to do something?

As an old example of moral issues in Wyoming politics, there was once a member of the legislature who rose high up in it and then went after pornography.  That basically doomed his anticipated run for Governor.  People weren't backing pornography, but it just seemed that it was a bit much to base your campaign on it let alone introduce a bill addressing it, as he tried to do and which pretty much torpedoed his later chances.

Perhaps the best example of this is one that never comes into campaigns but which demonstrates the general viewpoint, prostitution.  I've lived in pretty much the same county, except for periods of time out of it in my adult years for various reasons, my entire life, and during that time I don't recall a single instance in which there was not a known house of prostitution in the county that everyone knew about and ignored.

Now prostitution has always been illegal here, but it's also been pretty much openly tolerated as long as it wasn't flaunted.  Indeed, at one time Casper had a very open red light district that more or less did flaunt it until it spilled out of the district, when there would then be reactions.  That district, the Sand Bar, was in its dying days when I was a kid, but was still around.  When it closed its business was shift to other locations.  One of those was an establishment near the airport, Tokyo Message, which carried on business for decades.  Everyone knew this.  When it was raided and closed in the last decade it was a huge surprise, not because prostitution was going on there, but rather because it was hard to figure out why it was suddenly subject to having the law enforced.

Not that raiding Tokyo Message ended prostitution here.  It didn't.  It ended Tokyo Message.  Prostitution carries on.  The point is that almost everyone knows about this and agrees that prostitution is wrong, but almost nobody really feels that there's pressing need to address it.

Therefore, candidates like we just saw in the last election who ran on their outward Christianity weren't going to really get that much traction with it.  There are, no doubt, a lot of devout Protestants who may care if a person claims a faith or not, but there are more who are not likely to care that much, and many more who are Christian on some basis but don't base their votes too much on that.  The two demographics that are likely to really inform their votes through their Faith, moreover, aren't the ones that people openly campaign on.

Frank Barrett, a Republican Governor who was a Catholic and who I think may have been the first Catholic Governor in the state.  If you look up his Wikipedia bio, you wont find that mentioned as it likely wasn't mentioned much during his campaigns.

Indeed, that's also something worth noting.  There's never been a Wyoming politician who boldly declared during a campaign that they were Mormon and it'd be likely that would work against them if they did.  I do think that the Mormon faith is a having a politically notable influence on voting in some districts and even on certain issues, but it's not openly noted very often.  Likewise, there's never been a Wyoming Catholic politician who ran on being a Catholic, even though several have in fact been elected.  Early in the state's history that was one Irish immigrant politician who was a practicing Catholic who took steps to diminish his outward connection with the faith even while remaining adherent to it.   There have been to date two Wyoming candidates who were devout Greek Orthodox, including one of the just failed candidates, and you'd have to hunt that information down to even know that.   A long time very successful Wyoming candidate from my county was a practicing member of the Jewish faith and I can't even recall that ever coming up in a conversation regarding him.

Likewise the conservative assumption, still rampant post election, that Wyomingites hold radical views on the Federal government is totally misplaced.

Truth be known, most Wyomingites are aware of and comfortable with the Federal governments role in the state, which puts them in the middle or even the left in regards to that.  Wyomingites are overwhelmingly opposed to transferring public lands from the Federal government to the state.  Indeed, I'm sure that played a role in the votes received by both Gordon and Friess, both of whom were opposed to that, and why Hageman was not successful.

Indeed, the real Tea Party elements in the state seem to either be just incapable of acknowledging the reality that money talks, and transferring the public lands to Wyoming would result in their wholesale vending to big money elsewhere, or they live in the farm belt of the state where there isn't much public land and they have different interests than most people in the state, or they're from somewhere else and just don't get it.  That showed in Hageman's votes, which were very concentrated by county and show an element of that.  

This places, however, most Wyoming voters somewhere on what we'll call the "green" scale, green being the traditional color of agrarian parties.  They aren't read or blue.  And on this issue, that's a good thing. They're voting their interests, and those interests are value driven, not money driven, which in contrast, for all its talk of "freedom" and the like, Libertarians in this state tend to come down to (ie., "we'll all make boatloads of cash if only the government gets out of our way").

This, by the way, is also pretty demonstrable by the fact that the state loves Federal highway money.  Truth be known, I highly suspect that most Wyoming voters would be thrilled if the state took Federal Medicare money in the amounts that were offered to it, and we don't grasp why we said no on a matter of odd principle.  But then the last couple of legislatures has been highly Tea Party influenced.

It'll be interesting to see if that ends.  This election might have been a watershed.  Thousands of new Republicans registered to vote and the evidence is that the public lands issue may have brought them in. They aren't Tea Partiers by any means.