Lex Anteinternet: Work with meaning and the meaning of work.

Lex Anteinternet: Work with meaning and the meaning of work.: 

Work with meaning and the meaning of work.

You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

Blondie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I have a theory that certain work is existential by nature.  My post on that from several months ago:

A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.

Why do I note this?

Well I've had a bunch of synchronicitous events happen recently that perhaps demand it being noted, assuming that anything must be noted here at all.  Because they're all sort of circular, I'll start in one spot and gather the round corral, noting that these recollections are all recent, but not chronological.

I was walking out of the sporting goods store and ran into a law school colleague.  For some reason or another, for much of my life, I've always been the youngest person in a group as a rule, even when I really shouldn't have been.  Anyhow, this fellow, like two other of my law school friends, was an older law student, in law school, although I'm not sure how old he really was then,  Two of my other friends, both Vietnam War era veterans, were in their 40s, so they're in their mid 70s now.  I think this fellow was probably in his mid to late 30s.  He remained remarkably the same looking all that time.

He kind of bounced around at first as a lawyer before landing in a firm where he practiced for maybe 20 years.  He's retired now, and has been for awhile.  He asked me if I was getting ready to retire, which I indicated I wasn't, but I did ask him about the process, and he gave me some details of how he'd gone about it.  

Good to know from somebody who has done it.

He doesn't miss practicing at all.

In contrast to this, a close friend of mine, well really a relative, who is a lawyer who must be crowding 70 told me the other day he's not going to.  He'd miss the collegiality of being a lawyer.

That answer shocked me.  Not that he wasn't going to retire, but the collegiality.

Eh?

It may be just me, but only a handful of my friends are lawyers.  I do have some lawyer friends.  But most of my friends aren't lawyers and never have been.  I wouldn't miss most lawyers whatsoever.  Indeed, I miss a lot of my genuinely close friends due to the practice of law.

This, frankly, is probably an exception to the rule.  Law is a unique profession, litigation with in the law even more so, and by and large the onliy people who have a grasp on what it is like are other lawyers.  It is, I suppose, kind of like being a combat veteran that way.  Lawyers hang out with other lawyers as they're lawyers.  

Indeed, being heavily introverted, I've often noted how much lawyers enjoy professional gatherings. They really do.  There are organizations that we're all part of and we'll go to a conference and there will be a big dinner or something, everyone goes.

Unless my spouse is with me, or one of the few lawyers I really know well and like, I tend to avoid those gatherings.

Anyhow this takes me to a second point.

I know a couple of lawyers who have lost their souls.

I don't mean in a metaphysical sense.  That is, I'm not saying they're condemned to Hell.  What I'm saying is that their personalities are gone and been absorbed by false ones in the pursuit of nothing more than money.

It happens to people.  It's not a pleasant thing to see.  

I was never friends with either of the ones I have in mind.  Interestingly, however, one seems to be trying to emerge.  One, who sank into this a long time ago actually started talking to me the other day about what he was going to do "next", something he's never said before.

A really good lawyer friend of mine is mostly retired.  Like the fellow I mentioned above, while he had his doubts, he hasn't missed the practice at all.

Another good lawyer friend of mine, a woman, is trying to transition from one practice to another.

Two women I know otherwise recently lost their jobs. They weren't lawyers.

I note that as I think women in particular are subject to the Capitalist lie that careers are existentially defining, a completely modern notion.

St Paul was a tent maker.  St. Peter a fisherman.  I don't know if there are any classic Medieval or Renaissance paintings of St. Paul making a tent, but there should be.

Why do I note that?

Well, for this reason.  You don't think much about St. Paul being a tent maker as his occupation didn't define him.  His sainthood did.  

But a lot of us moderns sure have made our occupations define us.  And women are very much doing so now.

This takes me back to the item I linked in above.

In this case, unlike my uncle, he was much younger.  My age, in fact.  I hadn't seen him for many years, and before his troubles really set in.  He hadn't been able to adjust to them well.  The most common comment from people, none of whom were surprised, was that his torment was over.

I don't have any big plans, like one of my friends, for retirement.  I hope to be healthy, and just become more of an agrarian-killetarian than I presently am.  Funny thing is that recently I've been running into people who claim "you're looking really good". Somebody asked me the other day, indeed at the funeral gathering, "you're working out", the question in the form of a statement.  Not really.

Indeed, I've gained some weight I seemingly just can't lose, which I think is the byproduct of my thyroid medicine, which has made me hungry, and I know that I'm not in the physical condition I was before my recent health troubles commenced.  People close to me just won't accept that, which brings me to the other side of the retirement coin noted above.  Some lawyers I know are already planning for me to work into my 70s, as that's the thing to do, apparently. Long-suffering spouse, for her part, won't say something like that, but from an ag family, she doesn't really accept the concept of retirement anyhow.  Having said that, I wouldn't plan on my retiring from the ag operation either.

It finally occured to me, however, what's different about agricultural jobs as opposed to others, at least if you are an owner of the enterprise or part of it.  The occupation itself is existentially human.  It is, if you will, an Existential Occupation, or at least it is right now. The mindless gerbil like advance of "progress" may ruin that and reduce it to just another occupation.

Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species.  Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being.  It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots.  And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens.  It's in us.  That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.

It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note.  Clerics are in that category.  Storytellers and Historians are as well.  We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time.  They're all existential in nature.  Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that.  The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.

Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.

If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever.  I have very low interest in doing that.  I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending).  That probably sounds pretty dull to most people.  I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.

That's more than I really need for my point here, but it ties in, this way.

Most careers are just jobs. They're an industrial way of separating you from your homes to make money for somebody else, in exchange for which you make some money too.  This was done to men first, and then with the "women's liberation" movement of the 1960s, women drank the KookAide and have been wondering when the good feels will arrive.

They won't.

Most jobs have no greater existential meaning than that.  If you define yourself by them, you are defining yourself as a fiction.

Which is why I worry about the lawyers who collapse into the cartoonish litigation personality.  It makes you a cartoon, and not a very interesting one.

It's also why lawyers who become deep dive into the Whaling For Justice personality, or something like it, sort of boil off the people they were and become somebody nobody is interested in.

And I also think that's why old lawyers have a hard time retiring.  After selling your life away, is this it?  It must be. This must be it.  I must love this as otherwise. . . .

I will note, and strongly, that I'm not advocating here for something that seems to be a current rage.  Don't get any post high school education and hope for the best.

Indeed, the advocates of that, don't mean that.  They mean don't forget to look at occupations where you work with your hands.

Now listen to me, all of you. You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live.

Quintus Arrius, Ben Hur.

The truth of the matter is that we sell our lives for a living, but we shouldn't sell our souls.  A lot of career propaganda emphasis the nifty life you are supposed to have, but not the risk of losing your soul, and here I mean in both senses.  Being able to sell the minutes of your life away for a decent return means that you need to have skills of some sort that are valuable.  People should try to acquire those if for nothing else their own protection.

Women, I'd note, are particularly vulnerable here.  A woman with a professional degree, such as law, is armed against loss of employer.  A woman who doesn't have some sort of valuable skill is at the mercy of her employer.  They're the ones who lose their jobs readily, and who are subject to all sorts of risks.  

The trick, I guess, is to get those skills and remember that we shouldn't lose who we are.

One group of people who tend to make that career choice are people who work for the government. They're often grossly underpaid, but they also tend to have weighted the options and elected towards "quality of life".  Lawyers who work for the AG's office, or biologists who work for state and Federal agencies provide such examples.  

Interestingly, people on the outside in the same fields tend to hold these people in contempt.  I guess people working 80 hours a week to make a go of it are naturally resentful towards those who do not.  But those people are often very dedicated to their professions and even more purist than those who sell their labor in the private market.  A dear cousin of mine who recently died was one such example.  She was a research biologist at a university.  

We're about to head into a Federal administration here that seems to contain a contempt to government employees.  Indeed one recent campaign featured somebody who wants to limit the amount of time you can work for the Federal government.  The same campaign repeatedly noted the candidates rural roots.

The rural roots are real, but what an irony.  Descending from homesteaders means that you descent from the biggest American welfare program ever, one that used the U.S. Army to violently expel land occupants due to their race, to hand it out to European Americans.  Don't mistake my point, I love agriculture and regard it as an existential occupation, and if I'd been alive when you could have homesteaded, I would have.  But people who loved the land so much they fought for it, and lost, had the moral high ground on that, and those who came in behind them benefitted from the Federal largess and murder.

If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?

Tuco, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Genesis tells us that since we sinned in the Garden, we've condemned ourselves to work.  But it's also obvious that work was always part of the plan.  It's interesting how well this comports to how evolution and societal development worked.  We were likely a very happy group as aboriginals, and we know now that depression and modern angst is unknown in hunter gatherer societies.  But we ate from the tree of knowledge and acquired it, 

Well, now we have to work.  Make the best of it.

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 70th Edition. But fo...

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 70th Edition. But fo...: 

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist. 70th Edition. But for Wales, Welcome to Appalachia and pointless Presidential Sedevacantism musing.

Today Congress will certify the results of the 2024 election.  Unlike last time, as Trump agrees with the results this time, it'll go smoothly and with little drama.

It's a good time for this post.

The good, the bad, and the ugly.

Governor Freundenthal laying down the law.

We ran a couple of items on historic Wyoming inaugurations yesterday, one for Ed Herschler and the other for Nellie Tayloe Ross

Sunday, January 5, 1975. Ed Herschler inaugurated.

January 5, 1925. Nellie Tayloe Ross sworn in as Governor.

Both were Democrats.

I remember Herschler, who is regarded even today as Wyoming's most popular Governor.  That caused me to think and realize that during my lifetime, the Governor's office in Cheyenne has bee occupied by Democrats over half the time, and I'm 61 years old. Those Governors were:

Gov. Matthew Mead  2011 - 2019  Republican

Gov. Dave Freudenthal 2003 - 2011 Democratic

Gov. Jim Geringer 1995 - 2003 Republican

Gov. Michael J. Sullivan 1987 - 1995 Democratic

Gov. Edward Herschler 1975 - 1987 Democratic

Gov. Stanley K. Hathaway 1967 - 1975 Republican

Gov. Clifford P. Hansen 1963 - 1967 Republican

Of those men, and they've all been men, in my view Hathaway was the best.  He brought in the severance tax over the panic crying and whining of the legislature at the time.  

He wouldn't be successful doing that now

Herschler was likely the second best.

There hasn't been a bad one save for Geringer, who I was not impressed with at the time, and I'm still not.

Freudenthal was our last Democratic Governor.  I'm quite confident that there isn't a Democrat in the state who could win that office today.  The Democratic Party here is darned near dead.

Freudenthal was always blunt and gruff.  He had been a U.S. Attorney and in his speech he sort of reminds me of a more erudite variant of a Clint Eastwood character.  For that matter, at least prior to being Governor, he packed a .44 Mag around, concealed.  It was named "Due Process".

The Republican part is struggling.  It's been taken over by Populists, who really aren't Republicans.

I noted the Populist "Five and Dime" program here the other day.  It turns out that Freudenthal now writes a newsletter in Wyoming for the AARP.  I'm not a member of the AARP as I'm not retired, so I didn't read it.  But I've read about it, and he notes that the nickel and dime program's tax programs will gut municipal resources.  

It simply will.

I wonder if the Wyoming Freedom Caucus doesn't realize that, or if they just don't care.  My guess is that its a combination of both.

Property taxes in Wyoming are pretty much where money for police, firemen, roads, and everything, come from.  It's where the money for education comes from too.  I don't think the WFC folks care much about education, and I'm not too certain, given that so many of them are imports, they don't care about the rest of that either.  They probably don't really go out in their towns and counties much, and are happy in their newly built house which is driving up property values. They just don't want to be taxed.

A lot of services in this state, and education, are first rate, but everything is pretty lean.  This will change the state, and for the worse.  

Welcome to Appalachia.

But for Wales.

From Senator Barrasso's Facebook page, on July 28, 2020.  Along with the photograph, was this post: "I would like to wish a very Happy Birthday to Representative Liz Cheney. It is a privilege to represent and serve the people of Wyoming with you."

For Wales? Why Richard, it profit a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world. . . but for Wales!

A Man for All Seasons.

President Biden indicated the other day he was giving former Wyoming Congressman Liz Cheney the second highest award that a civilian can be given.

Our Senator, John Barrasso, has condemned this, stating:

President Biden was either going to pardon Liz Cheney or give her an award. She doesn’t deserve either. She represents partisanship and divisiveness — not Wyoming.

Barrasso is the Senate Whip right now, and in Donald Trump's GOP, now that McConnell has stepped aside as the leader of the Senate Republicans, that means the Whip does Trump's bidding.

Barrasso is probably right that Congressman Cheney no longer represents Wyoming's view.  We don't really know what his views are, as they've sort of blown with the wind as he started to sense he was in political trouble going into the primary. There was no doubt what so ever that his main opponent was definitely a Trumpite and far to the right.  If anything, Barrasso moved to the right of that candidate.

But I'll confess that I don't understand many of our current politicians, or certainly our Republican ones.  I've met some in one way or another. At least Barrasso would never have said what he did about Cheney prior to Trump.

I don't believe that he believes, really, what he said.

I don't understand wanting an elected position so badly that you'll compromise yourself and say what you don't believe.  I particularly don't grasp it in the case of a man who is 72 years old and who could, and really should, retire.

Is being whip that intoxicating?

It must be.

And how odd that at the same time that Barrasso is condemning somebody that he once got along with, he's praising, along with Cynthia Lummis, the late President Carter as “the personification of the American dream,” 

That statement, I'd note, comes along with the usual crap that Carter rose from humble yeoman peanut farmer to the Oval Office.  Carter, as we've already noted, was a Naval Academy trained nuclear engineer who had served in the Navy's submarine service.  To have done that means he was a genius.

He was also deeply Christian and wouldn't compromise his views for anything.

Rep. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo., stated, on Twitter:

President Jimmy Carter worked tirelessly for the country he loved, and we owe him a debt of gratitude for his service.

How can we owe Carter a debt of gratitude, which I agree we do, and not owe the same to former President Obama, or former President Biden? 

A Catholic saint who had been a lawyer (I've forgotten his name) declared to a friend before entering the Priesthood that he was leaving the law as it was too easy to lose your soul in the profession.  How much more true must that be for politicians, for reasons that I can hardly grasp.  

Entering a season of danger.

I fear that we're entering what will prove to be a very destructive and dangerous era.  

We shouldn't be surprised.

Politics is always full of extreme claims, but starting with the Obama Presidency, they began to enter the Bat Shit Crazy region, and not through Obama or the "establishment" Democrats.  The reaction to Obama was in some quarters very extreme.

Trump picked up on that and has incorporated it into his schtick.  A salesman by trade who formerly hung out with the rich and shallow, he realized that a disgruntled body of Americans were ready to listen to him, no matter what he said.

Since his defeat in 2019, he's yielded to really crazy and hateful statements.  People hate the comparison, but he's used the same demonization tactic that Hitler did.  Your problems are caused by somebody else, and that person is evil.  By January 6, 2020, a substantial body of the public had come to believe that.

That event was sort of our Reichstag moment, and things are going to get worse.  So now we have a deluded and likely mentally ill U.S. Army Master Sergeant blow himself up in a Tesla in front of a Trump hotel, in Los Vegas, claiming to be in support of Trump. 

MSG Livelsberger was likely pretty nuts and perhaps suffering from injuries that contributed to what he did.  But what's not really been circulated is what his full note said.  Somebody has published it, but I didn't save the link.  The truncated note says:

We are the United States of America, the best country people to ever exist! But right now we are terminally ill and headed toward collapse.

This was not a terrorist attack, it was a wake up call. Americans only pay attention to spectacles and violence. What better way to get my point across than a stunt with fireworks and explosives?

Why did I personally do it now? I needed to cleanse my mind of the brothers I’ve lost and relieve myself of the burden of the lives I took.

An email he left states:

In case I do not make it to my decision point or on to the Mexico border I am sending this now. Please do not release this until 1JAN and keep my identity private until then.

First off I am not under duress or hostile influence or control. My first car was a 2006 Black Ford Mustang V6 for verification.

What we have been seeing with "drones" is the operational use of gravitic propulsion systems powered aircraft by most recently China in the east coast, but throughout history, the US. Only we and China have this capability. Our OPEN location for this activity in the box is below.

China has been launching them from the Atlantic from submarines for years, but this activity recently has picked up. As of now, it is just a show of force and they are using it similar to how they used the balloon for sigint and isr, which are also part of the integrated coms system. There are dozens of those balloons in the air at any given time.

The so what is because of the speed and stealth of these unmanned AC, they are the most dangerous threat to national security that has ever existed. They basically have an unlimited payload capacity and can park it over the WH if they wanted. It's checkmate.

USG needs to give the history of this, how we are employing it and weaponizing it, how China is employing them and what the way forward is. China is poised to attack anywhere in the east coast

I've been followed for over a week now from likely homeland or FBI, and they are looking to move on me and are unlikely going to let me cross into Mexico, but won't because they know I am armed and I have a massive VBIED. I've been trying to maintain a very visible profile and have kept my phone and they are definitely digitally tracking me.

I have knowledge of this program and also war crimes that were covered up during airstrikes in Nimruz province Afghanistan in 2019 by the admin, DoD, DEA and CIA. I conducted targeting for these strikes of over 125 buildings (65 were struck because of CIVCAS) that killed hundreds of civilians in a single day. USFORA continued strikes after spotting civilians on initial ISR, it was supposed to take 6 minutes and scramble all aircraft in CENTCOM. The UN basically called these war crimes, but the administration made them disappear. I was part of that cover-up with USFORA and Agent [Redacted] of the DEA. So I don't know if my abduction attempt is related to either. I worked with GEN Millers 10 staff on this as well as the response to Bala Murghab. AOB-S Commander at the time. [Redacted] can validate this.

You need to elevate this to the media so we avoid a world war because this is a mutually assured destruction situation.

For vetting my Linkedin is Matt Berg or Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty 18Z out of 1-10 my profile is public. I have an active TSSCI with UAP USAP access."

Okay, he was pretty much bat shit crazy.  But in an era in which people listen to Tucker Carlson and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., . . . well you are going to get bat shit.

And then there's  Luigi Mangione.

Absolutely frighting meme endorsing murder.  That this is going around, is telling.

We haven't heard from him yet, but we all know that Luigi Mangione murdered the head of United Health Care seemingly because he was the head of United Health Care.

Moreover, some people are celebrating the murder.

That's outright scary.  And its interesting. I can't recall terrorist attacks against corporate officers, except in extreme times. There was of course the famous Wall Street Bombing of 1920, which shows up on this site as we covered its 100th Anniversary.  

Who would have expected something like that to return?

And then there were the radical groups of the 1970s, which seemed to be something that was behind us.

A lot of the same rage that fueled the rise of Trump fuels an anger like this, even though Trump himself is a very wealthy man and is now backed by the world's richest man, Elon Musk. 

On New Years Day a Muslim American from Texas, who was a U.S. Army veteran, performed an act of terrorism in New Orleans. The perpetrator may have also entered the bat shit region.  Apparently he left a note that he originally intended to act in support of ISIL by killing his family, which is downright bizarre.  He changed his mind and hit New Orleans, leaving a note that he conceived of himself in a war between believers and non believers.  Hitting New Orleans makes sense, in that contexts, although the press seems to have missed it, as its so heavily associated with a Catholic religions event, lent, in the form of a heavily secularized observation, Mardi Gras.

This attack is definitely different, I guess, and actually feeds into something that Trumpites have long maintained, that being that non Christian societies don't necessarily integrate well here.  Indeed, an irony of the 2024 election is that Muslims upset about the US supporting Israel in the current war didn't support Harris, and now are going to see a President who is in the Israel can do no wrong camp.

Am I blaming Trump for all of this?

No.

Some of it?

Well, sort of.

The same sort of ardent anger that gave rise to populist MAGA and the January 20 insurrection gives rise to an atmosphere where some serving members of the military feel they need to strike out against an imaginary domestic enemy.  Moreover, those inclined to political violence over their plight, often have no clear direction in how they do it.

Students of history would do well to recall that more than one member of the Nazi Party had been members of the German Communist Party. The rage that fueled a misbegotten fanatic love of the worst President in American history can just as easily turn on him, or on those conceived of as being class enemies, or contribute to an atmosphere of violence in general.

I have some predications regarding this.  And I'm going to leap back to Sen. Barrasso, who posted this in the wake of the attacks.

After what we saw in New Orleans, it is critical that the Senate confirms President Trump’s national security team as quickly as possible.

Eh?  How so?

Well, seeing as this refers to New Orleans, my first prediction is that the MAGA camp that is hostile to all immigrants is the one that will prevail.  Rather, the one that is hostile to all "alien" cultures is the one that will prevail.  Sorry Vivek Ganapathy Ramaswamy, you ain't a White Anglo Saxon Protestant, so you need to leave. 

That will be the view.

I'm not saying that's Dr. Barrasso's view.  I strongly suspect that the Wyoming Senator's views on things are much, much, much, much further to the left than his statements suggest, and much, much, much further to the left than those even held by traditional Wyomingites.  I don't even think he thought that out.  It just sounds like a good thing to say in your role as whip.

I will note that both attacks share one single commonality.  They were carried out by veterans of the United States Army.  There has been an ongoing investigation into extremism in the military, but my guess is that this isn't what Sen. Barrasso is talking about.  Indeed, the GOP was quick to leap on the thesis that the New Orleans attack was carried out by a recent immigrant, which it wasn't. And the second attack. . . that was carried out by a Green Beret.

One of my predictions is that we're going to see a violent couple of years.

The other is that within a year and a half the editorial pages of the American Rifleman, who fawned over Trump, will be decrying a GOP embrace of gun control.  Fans of radicals who proclaim themselves to be for democracy and freedom while ranting about others as enemies should here to study history.  

Gun control came in to the USSR with the Communists, after they'd secured power at the barrel of a gun.  It was the Irish Republicans who brought gun control into Ireland, after the republic had been won with guns.  People like to claim the Nazis brought gun control to Germany (they didn't), but those who like to yell that should recall that Hitler was elected into office as part of a populist movement that promised to fix the economy and which hated "others", so to speak.

As soon as Trump sees the populace as the enemy to his safety, he'll act to preserve himself.  It's not, after all, as if he's been competing at Camp Perry and he doesn't need anyone's vote in four years.  If he acts, what are those who supported him on this issue going to do, join the Democrats?

A third, and final, prediction.  Wyoming won't see one single good thing come its way due to the Trump Administration.  All the things that people imagine will occur, won't.  There won't be more oil drilled in some magic fashion.  The coal industry won't come roaring back.  Agriculture, and by that I mean real agriculture, will suffer due to trade policies.  Inflation will increase.

Waiting in the wings.

One final prediction.

There's a really good chance that much of what I'm noting won't come about for one reason.

J. D. Vance.

I don't want to sound like a Vance booster.  I'm not.  I do think he'd make a much better President that Trump, however, as he's not demented.

My guess is that Vance has an 18 month schedule for removing Trump.

Presidential Sedevacantism. Musing on something that won't occur. 

I've noticed that some have been developing a desperate set of legal theories proposing that Donald "Felonious Balonius, Potty Mouth" Trump can't be sworn in as President.

Well, he will be, but its interesting.

Let's start with this.

Donald Trump won the 2024 election, taking the popular vote as well as the electoral.  The popular vote part is really amazing, quite frankly, and something that probably even Trump didn't anticipate.  Indeed, it wasn't all that long ago that the Republican Party itself seriously wondered if it was doomed to demographic extinction, and the Democrats planned on it being and Trump was already creating lies on why he'd lost.

We'll note we were ahead of the curve on the demographic aspect in predicting that the Democrats, and for that matter the Republicans, on that, were likely wrong.

So Trump was elected, he will be sworn into office, and he will be the President in late January.  I'm not going to say for the next four years, as frankly, I've been amazed that neither Trump or Biden expired due to natural causes before now, and I don't really expect either of them to make it through the next four. 

I also expect, as is obvious, for Vance to wheel him out the door into managed health care at Mara Largo.

They are, after all, old.

Okay, so what are people pondering?

Well, purely as an exercise, could a case be made that Trump will not be the President?  Some are musing on that.

Well, you can (even though this is not going to occur).

Trump, is a felon.  He was convicted of 34 counts of falsifying business records.

This is an odd conviction, frankly. I really think those charges were fairly weak.  I question if they'll hold up on appeal.  But, be that as it may, he's been convicted of 34 counts of what amounts to a felony.

Let's look at felonies.

Blackstone, looking back at the long history of the term, maintained that “the true criterion of fel e also acknowledges a change in meaning over time: “The idea of felony is, indeed, so generally connected with that of capital punishment that we find it hard to separate them . . . .”19 As the definition of felony became less definitely tied to forfeiture and the use of capital punishment became more general, the number of felonies in English law multiplied. The traditional common law felonies were nine: murder, manslaughter, arson, burglary, robbery, rape, sodomy, mayhem, and larceny.20 Many more were added by statute. Francis Bacon, writing around 1620, listed some thirty-four felonies, including witchcraft and harboring a priest.21 Blackstone lamented that, in his day, “no less than a hundred and sixty [offenses] have been declared by act of parliament to be felonies . . . or, in other words, to be worthy of instant death

Unintended Collateral Consequences: Defining Felony in the Early American Republic.  Will Tress  University of Baltimore School of Law 

Sedevacantism is a hyper ultra extreme traditionalist Catholic thesis by a tiny minority that holds that the Seat of Peter, i.e., the office of Pope, is vacant and has been since 1958, or maybe even early.

It's frankly out to lunch, and so the thesis advanced below, a political thesis, likely is as well.

But I'll advance it anyhow.

Donald Trump cannot legitimately be sworn in as President in January, and therefore the administering of the oath of office to him will work a nullity, and there will be no President for the next four years.

Eh?

A felon cannot be sworn into office due to forfeiture.  That's the essence of forfeiture.

A photo of Donald Trump that appeared this week on Twitter.  I don't know the source.  It's postered here for another reason.  When Trump is caught in candid moments, which is fairly rarely, he looks like what he is, an old out of shape man.  His ramblings of this past week once again have raised questions on his mental status.  I continue to be surprised that old age didn't catch up on a permanent basis with either Biden or Trump, but then I'm still not convinced that either one of them, or at least one of them, will not expire due to natural causes before the inauguration.  I'm also convinced that the National Conservatives are already pondering removing him from office due to mental decline.

Now, the Constitution doesn't mention felonies at all.  Indeed, it'd hardly have to as the death penalty for the collection of them would make it unlikely that a felon would ever run for office.

That's likely why the Constitution just speaks of "high crimes and misdemeanors" when it refers to impeachment.

And it also says that Congress "may" impeach for those reasons, not must. 

Anyhow, not going to happen.

A more interesting one is the application of the 14th Amendment, which bars insurrectionist from office. 

Trump is an insurrectionist, so those who claim he's barred by the 14th Amendment are 100% correct.  He is.

But the 14th Amendment is a 19th Century amendment and much of the law before the early 20th Century was vague by modern standards.  Indeed, this is constantly a problem with Constitutional interpretation, and provides the reason that scholars and the courts have to look back in time to try to figure out what the drafters meant.

This is a really interesting one.  When drafted, everyone knew who the insurrectionist were, they were the Southerners who betrayed their country by serving in the Southern governments and thier armies.  But it doesn't' actually say that.

Apparently, nobody felt it had to.  The amendment worked just find and when people wanted back in, after repenting of their treason, they were provided with a legal means of doing so.  

Given that, the way this works is really weird in a current context.  You are supposed to just presume somebody is an insurrectionist, if they participated in an insurrection, and its up to them to ask for legal forgiveness.  If you don't think you were guilty of insurrection, you'd have to challenge it in court and prove you weren't, which is the reverse of the legal norms.

This causes all sorts of problems in a modern context. There's been no legal declaration, outside of Colorado, that an insurrection occurred.  Does that work?  Who knows, it hadn't been tested.

Indeed, what this would require would be an immediate legal challenge in the Federal Courts, or a mass refusal to swear Trump in, neither of which are going to occur, and frankly probably shouldn't.  It would provoke a constitutional crisis, at this point, which is likely to be worse than having Trump be the presumed President, at least for the next 18 months.

But if we assume all of this is correct, and that its' challenged, and ultimately a Federal Court gets around to ruling, "yup, he wasn't President", who would be?

Well, until somebody was sworn in, maybe nobody.

More likely, the Court would backdoor in his status until the legal decision was made.

None of this, we'd note, is going to happen.  No court challenge is going to be made, and probably none should be.  

Last edition.

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 69th Edition. TDS, Vance in the wings. Our geriatric oligarchy. Immigration spats. Banning puberty blockers. Mjuk flicka and the Mantilla Girls.

Labels: Donald Trump, Elon Musk, J. D. Vance, mehr Mensch sein, National Conservatism, Old Age, Populism, The rich and the poor, The roles of men and women, Trump Derangement Syndrome, Zeitgeist

Lex Anteinternet: New Years Day. Looking at 2024 through the front of the Church doors.

Lex Anteinternet: New Years Day. Looking at 2024 through the front ...:

New Years Day. Looking at 2024 through the front of the Church doors.

I noted in our post  New Year's Resolutions for Other People, sort of that we weren't going to post resolutions, but we did have some comments.  That's true here as well.

New Years Day is the Solemnity of Mary, the Holy Mother of God, a Catholic holy day of obligation.  Like a lot of Catholics, I went to Mass last night.

Mural of the Virgin Mary in downtown Salt Lake City.

I didn't go last night as I intended to go whoop it up on the town.¹   I've never been big on celebrating "New Years" anyhow, although we did last night with family and sort of extended family, as we have a at this point another person in the second half of their twenties whose pretty much incorporated into the family, but not officially or by blood.  Anyhow, it was pretty low key and I was in bed before midnight.  I think last year I made it to midnight to observe the fireworks some neighbors set off.  This year I did not.  I'm amazed that the same people, who really like fireworks, set them off again, as we've had hurricane force winds for the past day or so.

Anyhow, the reason I'm posting this comment is due to a particularly troublesome year for American Christianity in 2024.

American Protestants don't like to believe it, but the United States is and has always been a Protestant Country.  It's so Protestant, that the Protestants can't recognize that, and even people who claim to have no religion at all are pretty Protestant.  Even a lot of Catholics are pretty Protestantized and I've known some fairly secular Jews who were fairly Protestant.

Protestantism is a pretty big tent, with there being all sorts of tables within it, and with some of the tables really not liking others.  For much of the country's history the Episcopal Church was the dominant Protestant Church, which made a lot of sense.  The Episcopal Church is, of course, part of the Anglican Communion and the English descent is dominant in American ancestry.  Supposedly this is 26% of the population now, but that figure is probably inaccurate by at least half simply because people whose ancestry stretches back away have simply forgotten it and is not celebrated the way other ancestral inheritance is.  I'm of overwhelming Irish ancestry but even I have a little English ancestry of the Anglo Norman variety, brough in through Ireland.

Anyhow, as in the 18th Century most residents of British North America were from Great Britain, most were members of the Church of England, outside of Canada, where of course they were French and Catholic.

The Episcopal Church has never been in the only Protestant Church in what is now the US, however.  Right from the beginning there were bodies of dissenters from the established church who came here to be able to practice their faith without being molested for it. That doesn't mean they were keen on others practicing their faiths, and they often didn't tolerate other Protestants at all.  But they were there, and that gave rise to a sort of rough and ready loosely organized Protestantism in some regions, particularly the American South.  These groups really prospered following the American Civil War as they hadn't gotten behind the war the way Southern Episcopalians had.  These groups really spread across the nation following the 1970s.  Looking back, its amazing to realize that growing up I knew exactly one Baptist kid (he's now a Lutheran) and the three big Protestant churches in this category didn't exist here.  Wyoming is the least religious state in the US, but at that time almost all the Protestants I knew were Lutheran or Episcopalian.  I knew a handful of Methodists and of course Mormons, but Baptists or Assemblies of God?  Nope.

So what's this have to do with 2024?

The Election of 2024 saw a really strong association of Evangelical Christianity, which is very much an American thing, and the vote.  It's distinctly different than anything that's occurred before.

Evangelical Christianity has been nationally significant in elections since at least 1950 or so, but it wasn't until 2024 that the "Christian vote" meant the Evangelical vote outside of the American South.  Because they are fractured, they are not the largest Christian body in the country.  Oddly enough, while 67% of the population self identifies as Christian, and something like 44% identify as Protestant, Catholics are the largest single denomination.

The back story to this however is that the Reformation, which started in 1517, is ending.  

The Reformation was able to start in the first place due to a large element of ignorance.  This can't be said of Luther, who wasn't ignorant, but who was opinionated and wrong.  Luther opened the door, however, to people like Calvin, Zwingli and Knox who were fundamentally ignorant in certain ways.

The spread of cheap printing and ultimately the Internet makes ignorance on some things much more difficult to retain.  For centuries bodies of Protestant Christians held to sola scriptura and a belief that they were like the first Christians, even though there's always been Christian texts dating back to shortly after Christ's crucifixion.²   Now, all of a sudden, anybody can read them.  This has in fact caused a pronounced migration of really serious sola scriptura Christians to the Apostolic Churches, as well as a migration by serious "mainline" Protestants.  Some bodies at this point, like very conservative Anglicans and Lutherans, are mostly Protestant out of pure obstinance. 

The ultimate irony of all of this is that the mainline Protestant churches have collapsed in many places.  Part of this is due to the massive increase in wealth in the western world which has hurt religion in general, but part is also because it gets to be tough to explain why you are a member of one of these churches if you can't explain a really solid reason to be, as opposed being in an Apostolic church.

At the same time, and not too surprisingly, similar forces have been operating in the Evangelical world in the US.  As already noted, quite a few serious Evangelicals are now serious Catholics or Orthodox.  Others, however, have retreated into a deep American Evangelicalism that is resistant to looking at the early Church, even though they are aware of it. This is rooted, in no small part, to the go it alone history of these bodies.

At the same time that this has occurred, the spread of the American Civil Religion has grown which sort of holds that everyone is going to Heaven as long as they aren't bad.  Serious Catholics and Orthodox can't accommodate themselves to that but Evangelicals have attempted to, while at the same time realizing it really doesn't make sense.  

Obergefell, as we noted, was the watershed moment.  At that point, Christians of all types were faced with realizing that the US had really strayed far from observing its Christian origins, or at least the Christian faith, with there being all sorts of different reactions to it.  In Catholic Churches there was the realization that we really hadn't become as American as we thought, and we weren't going to.  Trads sprang up partially in reaction with now every Church having its contingent of Mantilla Girls giving an obstinate cultural no.

In Evangelical circles it helped fuel a militant conservatism that expresses its most radical nature in the New Apostolic Reformation which believes that we're on the cusp of a new Apostolic age, which will be Protestant in nature, and more transformational than any prior Great Awakening.  They believe that the United States is charged with a Devine mission and some have concluded, as unlikely as it would seem from the outside, that Donald Trump is an improbable Cyrus the Great who will bring this about.

The support of Southern Episcopalians for the Southern cause in the Civil War damaged in the South to such an extent that the non mainline churches, like the Southern Baptist, came up as a major force after the war.  The Baptists and Protestant itinerant preachers had warned during the war that wickedness was going to bring ruin.  It seemed that their warnings were proven by the results of the war.  Episcopal linking to a wicked cause diminished their credibility.

Donald Trump is not Cyrus the Great.  Mike Johnson is not standing in the shoes of Moses.  This will all have a bad end.  Or it might.  As noted, the Reformation is dying and in some ways this is the last stand of it.  Those linking their Christianity to a man like Donald Trump are pinning their hopes, and their faith, on a weak reed. The question is what happens when it breaks and how much damage has been done, including to Christianity in general, in the meantime.

Moreover, the question also exists if you can claim to bear a Christian standard while not observing parts of the faith that are established but uncomfortable, let alone contrary to what is now so easy to determine not to be part of the early faith.  Can those who clearly don't live a Christian life really be the shield wall against decay?  

Footnotes:

1.  As with my observation on Christmas in The Law and Christmas, being a Catholic puts you in a strange position in regard to the secular world, or rather the larger American culture.  Lots of people start celebrating New Years pretty darned early on New Years Even, which means as an employer you start to get questions about whether we're closing at noon and the like, pretty early on.  And also, while in the popular imagination people hit the bars at night, quite a few people have celebrator drinks here and there by late morning in reality.  If your concern is getting to a vigil Mass soon after work, you aren't one of those people. And if you are one of the people hitting Mass in the morning, you aren't having a late night.

2.  Sola scriptura never made sense and is obviously incorrect in that the New Testament itself mentions traditions outside of the written text.  But the Bible, moreover, which is the scripture that "Bible Believing" Christian's look to is the version that was set out by the Catholic Church as the Canon of Scripture. Nowhere in the Bible does is there a Devine instruction as to what books would be included in the Bible.

Indeed, this position is further weakened in that Luther put some books he personally didn't like in an appendix, and later Protestants removed them. That wasn't Biblical.  Moreover, the Eastern Orthodox Bible contains the Prayer of Manaseh, I Esdras, II Esdras, III Maccabees, IV Maccabees, Odes, and Psalm 151 and the Orthodox Tewahedo biblical canon some pre Christian Jewish books the others do not. While Catholics can explain why the books they include in their canon and can explain the relationship to the other Bibles, Protestant "Bible Believing" Christians flat out cannot.  All of the texts in the Orthodox Bibles are genuine ancient texts without dispute.  Moreover, there are early Christian writings which are genuine that are wholly omitted from any Bible.  The Sola Scriptura position just accepts the King James version of the Bible on the basis that it must be the canon on a pure matter of faith, which is not relying on scripture alone.

Related thread:

Virgin Mary Mural in Salt Lake City

A Protestant Country. It's history, and what it means.

Lex Anteinternet: New Year's Resolutions for Other People, sort of.

Lex Anteinternet: New Year's Resolutions for Other People, sort of.: 

New Year's Resolutions for Other People, sort of.

Some years I post basically satiric resolutions for other people.

2024 was not a great year in a lot of ways, and 2025 promises not to be, thus making anything comedic seem rather inappropriate.

So this is a bit more serious.

The general election of 2024 was truly the worst one in the country's history.  Two ancient men were offered up by the nation's two major political parties, with those parties only agreeing on the lie that you must vote for one of the two of them.  The Democratic Party, which emerged for a while after World War Two as a center left party representing the working class, completed its post Vietnam War lurch to the far left and couldn't claw its way back from there.  The Republican Party, formerly the party of conservatism and business, was destroyed by Donald Trump and his populist minions, a process set in motion in the 1970s and Reagan's Southern Strategy, thereby becoming a new expression of the Dixiecrats.  The attack on education that began in the 1980s under Reagan seemed to bear weedy fruit as well, as middle class Americans, and some upper class Americans, grasped onto utter fictions offered up by Trump and company which promised to return the country to a fictional perfect past.  Many voters, of course, felt trapped and voted both for and against politicians based on social issues which the Democrats in particular had helped bring into the forefront resulting in their defeat.

So, some serious hopes, if not resolutions.

Americans need to quit believing in something because it sounds like something they wish to be true.

We can't be an island insulated from the world.  We've hoped to some degree to that since day one, but we've never been close to achieving that status.  George Washington may have urged us to avoid foreign entanglements but we were involved, on an undeclared basis, in what were essentially two world wars by the early part of the 19th Century, one against France, and another against the United Kingdom and her allies.  While many have long declared that "we aren't the world's policeman", if we aren't there's hardly any police at all.  And if new police arise, there's a really good chance we won't like it.  Our best hope, if we get to that point, is that its the combined countries of Europe, but what if, instead, its the People's Republic of China?

The internet and modern travel have shrunk the world so much that there's no escaping the impact of even minor disruptions around the globe.  A war in Ukraine increases the cost of pasta in Italy and groceries, thereafter, in the US, as the most minor of examples.

We can whine about "forever wars" but the truth of the matter is that we haven't fought a substantial war since we backed out of Vietnam in 1973.  Even at that, there were fewer men garrisoned in Vietnam at the height of the American involvement in the war than there were involved in the Battle of the Bulge, which of course was a single American World War Two battle.  All wars are serious and horrible, but the post Vietnam War conflicts we've been in have, in real terms, been minor in comparison to anything that came after 1975's fall of Saigon.

We can't ignore the globe.

Climate Change is real and needs to be addressed basically 30 years ago. There is still time to act, but that action needs to be massive and drastic.  Believing that this isn't the case is an example of willful denial of science and ultimately an act of theft, if not murder, of future generations.  Denying this because my income is based on oil, and I freely concede much of mine is, doesn't change the reality.

Science of all types needs to be taken seriously.  Sure, it isn't always right, but it's more often right than the ravings of somebody who bases their positions on the spouting of former Playboy centerfolds or quack celebrities.¹

On this, vaccinations work.  They do.  If you don't want to get vaccinated, don't, but don't pretend that's because Bill Gates is looking for a way to steal your lunch.

On science, we need to comport more to nature.  That includes our own natures.  Poisoning the womb and murdering infants in the womb isn't "health care", its poisoning yourself and murdering your offspring.  Its' deeply anti natural.

Along the same lines, there are only two genders in mammals. That's it.  You, smart primate, are a member of the most sexually dimorphic species on the planet and are either deeply male or female.  Those pretending otherwise as to their persons are mentally ill, either temporarily or perhaps more permanently.  Society doesn't need to accommodate, in any fashion, this illness.

Homosexuality is the same, some sort of disorder, but not one that presents a societal threat through its tolerance.  It does, however, due to excess accommodation.  One of the world's oldest institutions, marriage, has been so damaged.  But much damage had already been done to marriage due to the erosion of a serious understanding of what it is.

Of course, that was long in coming and gets to the next topic.  Many societal institutions exist for the preservation and protection of society itself, not to make you "happy" or "fulfilled".  Starting in 1953 we began the massive erosion of societal institutions and its been a complete disaster.  There needs to be a serious effort to claw back that which has been lost, including in this area.  There's no reason to tolerate extramarital procreation, whether its by some nameless drug addict or Elon Musk.  Societal norms need to be restored.² 

This gets necessarily to the topic of religion, which has been in the news constantly this year.  It's odd if you realize that we can now so easily access early Christian texts that we can determine what early Christians believed very easily, and it often doesn't look anything like what's coming from The New Apostolic Reformation, or for that matter the "reformed" branches of the 16th Century Reformation, none of which has kept people from imagining Donald Trump as a latter day Cyrus the Great.

In 2024, when the writings of 124 AD are easily available, "religious" Americans who feel that Christianity stops at their own front door and that what they do is okay as they do it, are often far off the mark.  Finding Donald Trump to be a "Godly man" with his serial polygamy and what not is absurd, but then people getting married again and again and pretending that comports with the faith also are out to lunch.  It's not just Christianity, we'd note, that suffers from this.

Nature cares little if you accept nature and its doctrines.  It simply gives the dope slap to those who don't.  Not immediately, but sooner or later.  The Populists who seized control of the country have a chance to recreate the county into what they imagine it should be, but only if they accept that.  Chances are, of course, that National Conservatives will rapidly eclipse them in a year or two with Donald Trump's inevitable passing or inescapable dementia, and like it or nor, they appear to have a firmer grasp on this.  People should ponder it and try to get a grasp themselves.  

Part of that would be that if you feel a politician or a super rich dude has your interest in mind, or that if you believe that economics serves your own economic interest because it must, or if you feel that God abhors your homosexual neighbor but is okay with your third marriage, you need to rethink things.

Footnotes

1.  Jenny McCarthy, who seems to have dropped off the public radar, was famous initially for being a brash Playboy centerfold was an early backer of the vaccines cause autism baloney. They do not.  Now we see Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., backing that absurd view.

2.  The other day I saw an item on Twitter in some dimwit on Twitter claiming some level of authority stated:

Taylor @taylor_vahey

waiting until marriage to have sex with someone is incredibly stupid due to the fact that sometimes two people are not sexually compatible

do not wait until you are locked in for life to find that out

That post is so moronic, on multiple levels, that it could lead to a long thread itself, but only a blistering rich and narcissistic society would even have a concept in some quarters of sexual compatibility.

Our species, homo sapiens sapiens, has gone from nearly being driven to extinction 900,000 years ago to dominating the globe.  We know for a fact that homo sapiens sapiens mated with homo sapiens neaderthalensis, and we're we're learning that we, and the Neanderthals, mated with the Denisovans.  Sexual compatibility doesn't seem to be a human problem.

Last edition:

Honesty and Authenticity. Resolutions.

Labels: Authenticity, Honesty, Introspection, New Year's Resolutions

Lex Anteinternet: The life of Fran Gerard/Francis Anna Camuglia.

Lex Anteinternet: The life of Fran Gerard/Francis Anna Camuglia. Wa...: 

The life of Fran Gerard/Francis Anna Camuglia. Was Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

The top half of the March 1967 centerfold depicting the 19 year old "Fran Gerard".  This photo was taken from Cynthia Blanton's webpage, where it appears in this fashion (i.e., you can't see her nude) and is put up here under the fair use exception.  No doubt if the full centerfold was spread out, Camuglia's happy smile would not be what attention was drawn to.

Lex Anteinternet: Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.: I ran into this item in a really roundabout way, that being a random link to a 1967 newspaper article.  That isn't mentioned in either o...

Sort of going down the rabbit hole, I suppose, on this one, but the story is so illustrative of certain things, most of them pretty sad, so it's worth an additional, illustrative, look.

Cynthia Blanton replied to the post here, which was extremely nice of her to do, on her being a doppelganger for Francis Anna Camuglia, the March 1967 Playboy "Playmate", who appeared in that role as Fran Gerard.  It turns out that my comment that they were close in age was not only correct, but there's an added freakish element of. The two young women were just eight months apart in age and, while Blanton had not met Camuglia, they had even been schoolmates in the same California high school, Granada Hills High School, prior to Blanton's family moving only shortly before March 1967.  

Camuglia's obituary simply notes that she "attended" the school, which causes me to suspect, with nothing to back it up, that she might not have graduated.  Her life would likewise suggest she didn't graduate.

The high school still exists, but is a charter school now.  It was nearly new then, having opened in 1960.  It seems to have consistently been a well regarded high school.

Camuglia was just a teenager when she appeared in Playboy and only barely out of high school.  And not only was she only 19 when the photos ran, give the nature of production, she was 18 when they were taken.  

One year younger would have made this child pornography.

Not that this would prove to be a deterrent for Playboy.  At least two of the Playboy "Playmates" were 17 years old when their photographs were taken, and the magazine knew that at least one of the girls had that young age. They waited to run that girls' 17 year old nude photographs until she turned 18, which would not have made it legal, but rather likely to be undiscovered.  Another seems to have lied about her age, although seemingly this could have been checked up on.  One girl was specifically run as a recent high school grad who was the "youngest" playmate and getting her high school wish to be a centerfold, when in fact she was 17.

Early on, Playboy was under a serious European threat for advancing pedophilia, although oddly enough from its cartoons.  It turns out, however, that it did in fact go as low as it could go, age wise, for nudes, and even lower than legally allowed.

To add to the sadness of this, Camuglia's first husband had divorced her, or vice versa, just a month prior to these running.  When he married her he was 37 years old. She was 18.

I don't know the reasons for the divorce, or the marriage.  What did an 18 year old see in a 37 year old. I don't know what he saw in her, but her physical attributes were no doubt undeniable. The marriage lasted only seven months and he disappears from the record.  A person has to wonder if the Playboy spread brought about the divorce, although that's pure speculation.  The odds wouldn't have been good for its survival at any rate, given the odd age disparity.

Her next marriage was in 1970.  She would have been 22 years old at that time.  Her second husband doesn't seem to be mentioned on her headstone, however, which suggests that she was not married at the time of her death.

Her father died in 2010, and her mother in 2016.  Their devotion to each other, and their children, is noted on their headstones.

Undoubtedly another Playboy photograph, but as she more likely actually appeared.  Fran Camuglia didn't actually wear glasses.  This was taken from an entry on Find A Grave and is likewise put up under the fair use exception.

I don't know where this all goes, but its a sort of morality play on bad decisions, combined with a lack of societal safe guards, and declining public morality.  It's perfectly legal for a 37 year old to marry an 18 year old, but it's almost never a good idea.  I'd guess her parents opposed it, and we don't know the story behind it.   Really short marriages of much older men to teenagers have historically tended to be explained by pregnancy or mistaken belief in pregnancy, and the 18 year old Camuglia could fairly easily pass for an older young woman.  Male interest in her can easily be explained by her obvious, apparently, physical assets, something which has apparently caused her to retain a fan base forty years after her tragic death.

It's hard to believe that this story wouldn't have worked out better if Playboy hadn't been around to exploit young women.  I'll spare repeating all the details that were given in the documentary on the magazine, but they're horrific.  Suicide wasn't limited to Camuglia.  Murder was visited on at least one Playmate and visited upon a person by one.  According to the documentary one young woman associated with the magazine died at a party and her body simply disappeared.  One suicide scrawled her opinion on Hugh Hefner graphically on a wall in the apartment where she killed herself.  A host of "bunnies" was  used by men at an event physically in a way that traumatized them.

What, if anything, Camuglia endured we don't know.  Maybe only having her 18 year old body be the object of, well, for forty decades, which would be odd enough, and which would also contribute to psychic loss.

In 1967 when Camuglia appeared in the magazine, in middle class society the magazine was both accepted and regarded as dirty.  It claimed for itself that it managed to become the Stars and Stripes of the Vietnam War, and as grossly exaggerated in Apocalypse Now, it was so accepted by that time that Playmates appearing in the way that movie stars had in World War Two and Korea in the combat theater occurred.  Pinup girls didn't appear overseas in the earlier wars, even though they existed.

At the same time, however, the magazine remained a "dirty" magazine and there were legal efforts as late as the 1970s to try to address its obscenity, although they failed.  Being n the magazine branded those who did it in ways they could not escape.  Whatever happened to Camuglia, she apparently couldn't escape it.

Well, may God rest her soul and may the perpetual light shine upon her, and all who endured such tragedy..

Related thread:

Francis Anna Camuglia and Cynthia Blanton.

Labels: 1960s, 1967, 1970s, 1980s, 1985, Commentary, Growing up in the 1960s, Growing up in the 1970s, Playboy Philosophy, pornography, Teenagers, The relationship between men and women, Women