Questioner: "Why did you leave the Republican Party?"
George F Will: "The same reason I joined it. I am a conservative."
If I were to listen to people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, or some of the Freedom Caucus here in Wyoming, it would be go.
If I listen to lifelong residents here in the state, including some lifelong Republicans whom would currently be classified as RINO's by the newly populist Wyoming GOP, it would be stay. Alan Simpson, who is an "anybody but Trump", former U.S. Senator, and who the Park County GOP tried to boot out as a elected precinct committeeman, is staying.
The problem ultimately is what time do you begin to smell like the crowd on the bus?
Konrad Adenauer of the Christian Democratic Union, West Germany's first post-war chancellor. He worked towards compromise and ended denazification early, even though he'd speant the remaining months of World War Two in prison and barely survived. By CDU - This file was provided to Wikimedia Commons by the Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung, a German political foundation, as part of a cooperation project., CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=16173747
To put it another way, I'd give an historical example. It's often noted that quite a few Germans joined the Nazi Party as it was just a way to get by, or advance careers, etc., during the Third Reich period of German history. When I was a kid, there was a lot of sympathy, oddly enough, for that view amongst those who were of the World War Two generation, although at the same time, there was a widely held belief that militarism, combined with radical nationalism, were something that was basically in the German DNA. The US, as is well known, didn't even particularly worry about letting former Nazis into the country.
The Germans themselves pretty much turned a blind eye towards this, so many of them had been in the Nazi Party. Even post-war German politicians who had spent the war in exile did, as it was the programmatic thing to do.
Since that time, however, that view has really changed. It started to in 1968 when German students rioted and exposed former Nazis in the police. Germans haven't really come to terms with it, but having been a member of the Nazi Party is a mark of shame, and it's become to be something despised everywhere, even if a person did it for practical reasons and wasn't really involved in the party.
And it should be a mark of shame.
Americans have been sanctimonious about that for a long time, but starting in the 1970s lots of Americans became ashamed, in varying degrees, of our own ancestors in regard to various things. Ironically, the backlash to that, symbolized by Confederate battle flags, is part of what brings us to our current crisis.
Ed Herschler, former Marine Corps Raider, and Democratic lawyer, who was Wyoming's Governor from 1975 to 1987. Herschler probably wouldn't have a home in today's Democratic Party in Wyoming.
I registered as a Republican the first time I was old enough to vote. The first Presidential Election I was old enough to vote in was the 1984 Presidential election, in which I voted for Ronald Reagan. The first election I was old enough to vote in was the 1982 off year election. I honestly don't know who I voted for Senator. Malcolm Wallop won, but I very well have voted for the Democrat. Dick Cheney wont reelection that year against Ted Hommel, whom I don't recall at all. I probably voted for Cheney. I know that I voted for the reelection of Democratic Governor Ed Herschler, who was one of the state's great Governors.
A split ticket.
Split tickets were no doubt common in my family. My father would never reveal who he voted for in an election. The first Presidential election I recall was the 1972 Election in which Nixon ran against McGovern, and I asked who he voted for when he came home. He wouldn't say, and I don't know to this day.
I knew that my father registered Republican, but not everyone in my father's family did. My grandmother, for one, registtered Demcrat,somethign I became aware of when we were visiting her, which we frequently did, at her retirement apartment here in town. She was pretty clear that she was an unapologetic Democrat, which made sense given that she was 100% Irish by descent. Most Irish Americans, at that time, were Democrats, and all real ones were Catholic. Reagan, who claimed Irish ancestry, woudl have been regarded a a dual pretender for that reason by many of them.
My father's view, and it remains mine, that you voted for the person and what they stood for, not hte party.
But being in a party means something, and that has increasingly come to be the case.
I switched parties after that 1984 election. I was, and remain, a conservative, but the GOP was drifting further from a conservative center in that period, and as I've noted, the election of Ronald Reagan paved the path for Donald Trump, although I won't say that was obvious then. And also, Democrats were the party that cared about public lands, as they still do, and cared about rural and conservation issues that I cared about and still do. The GOP locally was becoming hostile to them. So I switched.
Campaign image for Mike Sullivan, Democratic Governor from 1987 to 1995.
I remained a Democrat probably from about 1984 until some time in the last fifteen years. Being a Democrat in Wyoming meant that you were increasingly marginalized, but finally what pushed me out was that it meant being in the Party of Death. The Democrats went from a party that, in 1973, allowed you to be middle of the road conservative and pro-life. We had a Governor, Mike Sullivan, who was just that. By the 2000s, however, that was becoming impossible. Locally most of the old Democrats became Republicans, some running solid local campaigns as Republicans even though they had only been that briefly. Even as late as the late 1990s, however, the Democrats ran some really serious candidates for Congress, with the races being surprisingly close in retrospect. Close, as they say, only counts with hand grenades and horseshoes, but some of those races were quite close. The GOP hold on those offices was not secure.
Dave Freudenthal, Democratic Governor from 2003 to 2011.
Before I re-registered as a Republican, I was an independent for a while. Being an independent meant that primaries became nearly irrelevant to me, and increasingly, as the Democratic Party died and became a far left wing club, starting in the 2000s., it also meant that basically the election was decided in the primaries. Like the other rehoming Democrats, however, we felt comfortable in a party that seemingly had given up its hostility to public lands. And frankly, since the 1970s, the GOP in Wyoming had really been sui generis. Conservative positions nationally, including ones I supported, routinely failed in the Republican legislature. Abortion is a good example. The party nationally was against it, I'm against it personally, but bills to restrict it failed and got nowhere in a Republican legislature.
The Clinton era really impacted the Democratic Party here locally. Wyomingites just didn't like him. That really started off the process of the death of the Democratic Party here. As center right Democrats abandoned the party in response, left wing Democrats were all that remained, and the party has become completely clueless on many things, making it all the more marginalized. But just as Clinton had that impact on the Democrats, Trump has on the GOP.
Throughout the 70s and 80s it was the case that Wyoming tended to export a lot of its population, which it still does, and then take in transients briefly during booms. In the last fifteen or so years, however, a lot of the transient population, together with others from disparate regions, have stayed. They've brought their politics with them, and now in the era of Trump, those views have really taken over the GOP, save for about three pockets of the old party that dominate in Natrona, Albany and Laramie Counties. A civil war has gone on in some counties, and is playing out right now in Park County. In the legislature, the old party still has control, but the new party, branded as the Freedom Caucus, which likes to call its rival the UniParty, is rising. The politics being advanced are, in tone, almost unrecognizable.
Like it or not, on social issues the old GOP's view was "I don't care what you do, just leave me alone". That attitude has really changed. Given a bruising in the early 1990s due to a Southeastern Wyoming effort to privatize wildlife, the party became pro public lands for awhile. That's change. The party was not libertarian. That's changed.
Money helped change it, which is a story that's really been missed.
Like the Democrats of the 90s, a lot of the old Republicans have started to abandon the party. If there was another viable party to go to, floods would leave. A viable third party might well prove to be the majority party in the state, or at least a close second to the GOP, if there was one.
There isn't.
So, what to do?
While it'll end up either being a pipe dream or an example of a dream deferred, there's still reason to believe that much of this will be transitory. If Trump does not win the 2024 Presidential Election, and he may very well not, he's as done as the blue plate special at a roadside café as the GOP leader. Somebody will emerge, but it's not really likely to be the Trump clone so widely expected. And the relocated populists may very well not have that long of run in Wyoming. Wyomingites, the real ones, also tend to have a subtle history of revenge against politicians who betray their interests. Those riding hiding high on anti-public lands, anti-local interests, may come to regret it at the polls later on.
The Johnson County invaders of 1892. The Republican Party, whose politicians had been involved in the raid on Natrona and Johnson Counties, took a beating in the following elections.
Or maybe this process will continue, in which case even if Trump wins this year, the GOP will die. By 2028, it won't be able to win anything and a new party will have to start to emerge.
We'll see.
None of which is comfortable for the State's real Republicans.
Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ.
Wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord.
For the husband is head of his wife just as Christ is head of the church, he himself the savior of the body.
As the church is subordinate to Christ, so wives should be subordinate to their husbands in everything.
Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ loved the church and handed himself over for hert to sanctify her, cleansing her by the bath of water with the word, that he might present to himself the church in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.
So husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
For no one hates his own flesh but rather nourishes and cherishes it, even as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body.
“For this reason a man shall leave father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”
This is a great mystery, but I speak in reference to Christ and the church.
In any case, each one of you should love his wife as himself, and the wife should respect her husband.
St. Paul, Ephesians, Chapter 5.
As the old phrase goes, fools rush in where angles fear to tread, and my commenting here is, I am well aware, completely foolish.
I know next to nothing about domestic law, and even less than that. I've never experienced any aspect of it myself personally, I don't delve into it regularly at work, but on odd occasion I, like every lawyer, must.
I don't like it when I have to.
When a civil litigator takes a look at domestic law, he often tends to be shocked. I was that way when I looked into the topic of grandparent's rights some years ago. The opponent was also shocked when I started treating the case like heavy duty civil litigation. What the heck? Well, the case ended up changing that area of the law after years of the domestic practitioners just doing the "well, that's the way we do this".
Not anymore.
Recently I've been looking at divorce law for a tangential reason, and once again I'm shocked and appalled.
Wyoming uses "no fault" divorce, like most states.
Or maybe it doesn't. More on that below.
No fault was the biggest insult to the law ever created and a knife to the gut of society.
Illustration of No-Fault Divorce. The petitioner is taking a blade to the gut of a helpless defendant.
The legislative stupidity in this area, however, started some time before that. As such things often do, the story has a "the road to Hell is paved with good intentions" aspect to it.
Let's go way back.
At least during the state's territorial days, court's would occasionally order a cohabitating couple to marry. This led me to assume that cohabitation of unmarried couples was illegal, and perhaps it was, but I've not found any statutory basis for that. I haven't researched it in depth, either. Fornication was a crime in many states, however, and it might have therefore been one in Wyoming. Additionally, Wyoming imperfectly adopted the Common Law upon statehood, and for that reason court's may have felt they had the authority to address cohabitation, which normally would result in a marriage by fiat (Common Law Marriage). At least right around the time of statehood there was a statute that addressed this topic in the "statutory rape" context, but the fairly shocking provisions of it were that the ages addressed were 10 years of age for a girl, and 14 for a boy. I.e., a 14-year-old boy was expressly prohibited by law from having intercourse with a ten-year-old girl, and would be tried for rape if he did. Apparently the scriveners of the law in the Dakotas, which is where we obtained our first set of statutes, felt differently about very tender ages than we might. Having said that, the bill in the legislature last year which provided:
(a) At the time of marriage the parties shall be at least sixteen (16) years of age except as otherwise provided.
(b) All marriages involving a person under sixteen (16) years of age are prohibited and voidable, unless before contracting the marriage a judge of a court of record in Wyoming approves the marriage and authorizes the county clerk to issue a license therefor.
(c) When either party is a minor, no license shall be granted without the verbal consent, if present, and written consent, if absent, of the father, mother, guardian or person having the care and control of the minor. Written consent shall be proved by the testimony of at least one (1) competent witness.
Surprisingly, this bill was met with opposition. Before that, ages below age 16 were allowed with the Court's consent, and amazingly, there had apparently been a few instances of that occurring over the last decade.
The change, anyhow, was in my view, a good one. Most people would agree.
Up until 1941, Wyoming had a set of "heart balm" statutes providing for common decency, common sense, protection of the common good, and which were fundamentally grounded in the laws of society and nature. In that year, just months before the Japanese would cause the balance of human decency to be to exaggerated towards oblivion, the 1941 Wyoming legislature eliminated them, stating:
The remedies heretofore provided by law for the enforcement of actions based upon alleged alienation of affection, criminal conversation, seduction and breach of contract to marry, having been subjected to grave abuses, causing extreme annoyance, embarrassment, humiliation and pecuniary damage to many persons wholly innocent and free of any wrong-doing, who were merely the victims of circumstances, and such remedies having been exercised by unscrupulous persons for their unjust enrichment, and such remedies having furnished vehicles for the commission or attempted commission of crime and in many cases having resulted in the perpetration of frauds, it is hereby declared as the public policy of the State that the best interests of the people of the State will be served by the abolition of such remedies. Consequently, in the public interest, the necessity for the enactment of this article is hereby declared as a matter of legislative determination.
1941 Wyo. Sess. Laws ch. 36 § 1.
Horse shit.
The thing about the "heart balm" statutes is that they heavily weighted the importance of the male/female relationship in a legal and cautionary way. The causes of action were varied, but all of a similar nature. There was 1) breach of contract to marry (breach of promise), 2) alienation of affection, 3) criminal conservation, and 4) seduction. This mean that there were real consequences for failing to seriously undertake the relationship from the onset, and in failing to take care of it. Rarely noticed on this, the penalties fell more often on men, than women, but protected both.
What were these causes of action?
We'll take a closer look.
The proposal.
Breach of promise.
Breach of contract to marry, or as it was more often called, "breach of promise", was a unilateral broken engagement. The non-breaching party was entitled to receive damages that included the benefits were that were to be had from the marriage and specific injuries to the plaintiff, including humiliation and psychological injury.
In the view of us moderns, this seems Victorian and quaint, but it was anything but. Prior to birth control, relationships between men and women were, we might say, deadly serious. While the social standards, based on Christian concepts and morality, meant that sex before marriage was frowned upon, and while it was also the case that a high percentage of people, particularly women, did not engage in sex before marriage, things began to break down when couples engaged and people knew it. This does not mean to suggest that people behaved like they do now, as they certainly did not.
Engagement periods seem to have lasted a year or so, although there wasn't any set period. One period etiquette book provided:
There are exceptions to the rules which govern engagements, as well as other things; but as in other cases, the exception only proves the wisdom and justice of the rule. There have been happy marriages after a few days' or even hours' acquaintance, and there have been divorces and broken lives after engagements which have existed for years. The medium, therefore, may be considered the best plan to pursue; namely, an engagement which is neither too short nor too long, but just sufficient to make a broad and easy stepping-stone between the old life and the new. The result of a very short engagement depends upon the strength and genuineness of character in the individuals, while the haste with which they have consummated so important a step says but little for their wisdom or prudence. A hasty and ill-advised marriage is a bad beginning in life. A very long engagement, on the contrary, is an eternity of that hope deferred which maketh the heart sick, and it is much harder for the engaged girl than for the engaged young man who is "a laggard in love". She has to wait usually, while he works actively, bringing himself into new relations, obtaining new experiences, and in many ways living a life which she can not share, and which is more than likely to interpose a barrier between their mutual sympathy and confidence, and cause them to drift apart from each other.
Gems of Deportment and Hints of Etiquette, Martha Louise Rayne, Detroit: Tyler & Co., 1881.
There was more to it than that, however. Close contact of this type was going to lead to something with some people. Therefore, with a broken engagement, the female participant would be potentially at least slightly tainted in some fashion, either regarded as "ruined" or regarded as an obviously difficult and unmarriageable person. There was a flip side to this, which we'll address below.
Additionally, in an era in which women had limited career opportunities, getting engaged set a woman on a certain financial course whose sudden end could be devastating economically. It was assumed, naturally enough, that during the engagement she'd sworn off other suitors, many of whom would have moved on in the meantime. Indeed, amongst the very old even now you'll frequently read stories of very elderly "first loves" reuniting, showing that whatever went wrong early on had forced them into other paths, even if they obviously retained affection for each other.
Seduction
The flipside of breach of promise, this tort sounds obvious, but in practice it was less so. The tort allowed an unmarried woman's father - or other person employing her services - to sue for the loss of these services when she became pregnant and could no longer perform them. We recently saw an example of this being played out on the Canadian World War Graphic History blog in an entry concerning Lieutenant Colonel Charles Flick.
As that entry noted, Flick and one Kate O'Sullivan engaged in some sort of sexual act. What occured isn't clear, but it seems pretty clear that Flick seduced Kate, or perhaps raped her. In any event, Flick, then an officer in the British Army, was sued by Kate's father. As the blog notes:
Seem harsh (assuming it wasn't rape)? Well, it really wasn't. Kate, at age 25, was reaching the upper limit of her marriageable age at the time, and now she had a daughter to take care of without Flick. Whether Flick tried to make it right (which was common) by marrying her or not, we don't know They didn't marry, however. Mr. O'Sullivan was left, therefore, with the financial burden of his daughter, who could now no longer work, and his granddaughter as well.
While this may all sound pretty harsh, it reflected an economic reality that still exists. Seduction continues to exist as a legal principle, even if we don't recognize it. It exists in the form of child support laws, which achieve essentially the same thing, but through the partial intervention of the state. At the time, it was up to people to take care of this on their own, which was not a less just system.
Flick, by the way, went on to a career in the British Army, serving overseas, and ultimately in the Canadian Army. He was an opponent of Japanese internment in Canada, so no matter what his early story was, he wasn't entirely a terrible person.
Alienation of Affection.
This occurred when someone interfered with the marriage, causing a spouse to lose affection, mostly often through seduction, but not always. Indeed, meddling third parties could be liable for interfering with a marriage, including objecting in laws or even clergymen. In the Wyoming case of Worth v. Worth, 48 Wyo. 441 (1935) a daughter-in-law suited her in laws on just such a claim, recovering the amount of $35,000 in damages. The damages in such cases were for emotional distress and mental anguish, shame, humiliation, and economic loss, including financial contributions toward the marriage and potentially punitive damages.
The elimination of this tort created a situation in which unrestrained interference in marriages can and frankly does arise. Amongst women, it tends to come up in terms of the "support" of female friends, many of whom have broken relationships themselves, or in some instances feel that a friend married beneath herself. I've seen this happen first hand, with the women who don't have to live the consequences harping on tehir friend to divorce.
The flipside of this is that men do the same thing, but it tends to be over other issues, with those issues often being sexual. In spite of they hypersexualized era in which we live, or perhaps because of it, it's frequently the case that couples enter a marriage badly damaged in this area and ultimately that impacts the woman much more. Women with multiple sexual partners before marriage are almost statistically incapable of living out their marriage. Women who have abused, on the other hand, tend to withdraw from the "marital debt" at some point leaving their husband's stunned. In that case, the men will tend to get the advice from their fellows that they should dump their wives for a more willing, and often younger, partner, or they'll simply begin to engage in adultery and excuse their conduct.
Criminal Conversation
Criminal conversation was similar to Alienation of Affection, but involved sex, so the last item noted here had arisen.. It was the tort of sexual intercourse outside marriage between the spouse and a third party, with each act being a separate tort, and the liable party being the third party. Damages included emotional harm, mental suffering, loss of support and income, and loss of consortium.
Not surprisingly, this tort changed over time to something radically different, and it then allowed an unmarried woman to sue on the grounds of seduction to obtain damages from her seducer, if her consent to sex was based upon his misrepresentation.
The unifying thread in all of these is that they took marriage, and beyond that, the male female relationship extremely seriously. For want of a better way to put, they took sex very seriously as well.
One of the things that the Sexual Revolution proved was that people were incredibly naive about sex, but not in the way that the revolutionaries imagined. In fact, the pre revolutionary condition proved to be the wise one, as it grasped the nature of sex. While perhaps not the best way to set it out, we'll quote here an item from Quora, which is always a somewhat dubious source of anything, which was on a thread on whether premarital relations should be illegal, which in a few countries they still are. Some commentator noted:
Sex absolutely, deeply and irreversibly transforms
You
Physically, Emotionally, Mentally and Spiritually.
It transforms abusers and the abused,
It transforms actors in porn,
It transforms friends who do it casually,
It transforms one-night standers,
It transforms johns and the prostitutes,
It transforms gays and lesbians,
It transforms the masturbater,
It transforms viewers of porn,
It transforms people who only do it orally,
It transforms those who use protection,
It tranforms unmarried couples,
It transforms married couples,
Sex is a language of the body.
And it is a langualge that has a definitely fixed meaning.
It communicates an absolute message.
It says I AM YOURS, FREELY, COMPLETELY, FAITHFULLY and FRUITFULLY.
After sex, you will either be made or ruined
Physically, Emotionally, Mentally and Spiritually.
We can think that nothing in us has changed,
But we will never the same as before.
We can tell ourselves that sex is pleasurable and healthy exercise,
And that we will be worse off denying ourselves from the pleasure it gives.
But, we will still have trivialised the message our body has communicated.
When we add meanings to the fixed message of sex,
The message of our mind is not aligned with the fixed message of our body.
We are no longer integrated. We have lied.
Sex in forms that detract from its fixed message is an abuse of the body.
It is cripplingly addictive, simply untruthful, absolutely unfulfilling and very ruinous.
If you have not done it. Don’t begin.
If you have done it, learn from this and do your best to cease.
Be hopeful. Every Saint has a past. Every sinner has a future.
Remember, the purpose of sex can only be properly fulfilled within and after
Marriage.
Written almost like a poem, the writer is absolutely correct. Psychologically, biologically and chemically, sex changes everything. It binds the people, whether they wish to be or not.
Indeed, in the area of odds and ends, one of the commentators on Catholic Stuff You Should know once noted this in that he was with a group of friends who wished that he could still see women the way he had, before. He remembered having done that, but the change was too profound to allow him to do again. That's likely nearly universally true, at least for men.
On a scarier note, in an interview I heard some time ago from a very orthodox Catholic source, a person who assisted with exorcisms noted that in some cases the possession had come about during intercourse, the metaphysical nature of it being such that license existed due to the marital act for the possession to transfer from one person to another.
Now, people like to wink and note that even amongst members of Apostolic faiths, premarital sex is common. But prior to birth control, it was much less so. It was not, however, nonexistent. Part of the breach of promise recognized this. But part also recognized that once couples head down this road, there's no real coming back, ever.
Ever.
And that, in no small part, is why "no fault" divorce works an irreparable and unconscionable injury to marriage, the married, and men and women in general.
It should not be allowed.
Before we look at that, or rather before we carry on directly, however, we'll take a big diversion. The reason is that we happened, in an unrelated fashion, upon something tagentially related to this topic and started a post on it, but then decided that it would really be better set out here.
And that involves two videos from The Catholic Gentleman blog.
Normally I'd be very hesitant to post a video of this type, probably out of cowardice as much as anything else, but these are so well done, if not really titled correctly, I'm making an exception.
They're really insightful.
Having said that, I'll retreat into cowardice a bit. The mere title, "What women don't understand about men", can raise hackles and eye rolls. And the fact that it's linked in from something called "The Catholic Gentleman" will immediately provoke cries of "rad trads" and patriarchist, and the like.
Well, actually, this is much more in the nature of informed evolutionary biology.
And, to note it again, they're mistitled. That's because these two videos could just as easily be "What men don't understand about women, and what women don't understand about men, and why that's the case.
Now, these do take this topic on from a semi religious prospective, but only semi, which is really interesting in that this is from The Catholic Gentleman blog. They creep right up on, and even cross deeply into, evolutionary biology, again in really insightful ways, and frankly if the religious aspects of these videos were omitted, they'd still be highly valid. In the first one, in fact, the religious elements are hardly mentioned.
Now, a few warnings about these insightful videos.
About half of the first one is about sex, sort of, but not completely. Rather, it's more accurately on how men perceives their relationship on a primary basis, which is heavily based on sex, which is part of the reason that they're so insightful. It also means that they touch on a topic gently, but much more graphically, than has ever been discussed here before.
Crud? Yes, but more accurate in some ways than we care to imagine once certain lines are crossed.
But the times call for it.
Put simply, and grossly simplifying it, we're an animal whose evolutionary biology is really odd, and that's not a societal thing. Of all the mammals, we belong to the group that has the highest degree of sexual dimorphism. And of every animal in our group, the primate, we're at the top of the scale, indeed, over the scale, on it. It defines a lot of who and what we are as an animal, and how the two sexes react with each other.
This is not, I'd note, unique to this analysis. The first time I recall reading this was actually a discussion on Homo sapiens evolution in The National Geographic decades ago. The thesis to explain it is that in one of our homo ancestors, quite a few ancestors ago, the dimorphism began when the species intelligence advanced, resulting in an unusually long period before we're mature adults. That meant that our mothers, or rather their mothers, had the responsibility of dealing with and taking care of the infant and child human for a long time. . . years in fact. That caused the dimorphism. Females evolved accordingly in one direction, and that direction emphasized security and relationships. Males evolved in another, and those involved a set of things we have otherwise discussed here, but also, and we really haven't discussed hit here, sex. The National Geographic author's assertion, and it seems well-supported, is that the evolutionary trade-off is that human males became basically ready, if you will, all the time and traded intercourse with human females, who are receptive, unusually, in varying degrees all the time. Females received food and protection.
That is, we'd note, a gross over simplification, somewhat.
As we're a very complicated species, with our big brains, it became more involved than that, but the basic elements remained. Humans do look for lifetime mates. Males are highly oriented towards connecting love of their mate, ultimately, with intercourse, and if it's absent, severe problems typically begin to arise. Women place little importance on that, however, past the initial stage of the formation of the couple, and instead place an enormous focus on relationships and feeling safe. Women really don't understand that for a married couple, or perhaps we should say one in a real union, that for the male, if the physical aspect of it is absent, he'll feel frustrated, insecure, and unloved. Men really don't get that women can simply omit this to some degree, or even entirely, and not feel the same way at all. On the other hand, men don't grasp that if a woman feels insecure, it's relationship threatening.
The first video does a really good job of explaining that. If you want to look into it, and do to my autodidactic nature I did, you can actually find a pile of stuff supporting what they're saying.
The second part of the first installment is on how men yearn for respect and equate love with respect. Women do not. Women expect support. You can find lots of stuff on this as well, although you need to be careful. One thing that is mentioned barely here, but which showed up in a net search, is that a female insulting a male, well, in a physical fashion in this arena can actually be devastating. There's an entire Reddit thread where a married man mentions this occurring in an argument which seems to have largely resolved on its primary point, but which seemed overwhelmingly likely to result in a divorce, even though the woman had repeatedly apologized. Even other women were counselling, "dump her".
A couple of notes, before moving on, one that's touched on in the video, and another not. The video makes a really good point, which has to do with male adolescence and how males develop. The context of it is in regard to transgenderism, and the point is made that the sort of crisis that males go through at a certain age, as things turn on, would be wholly absent for those claiming to be transgendered. Without that, however, you really aren't male. And no doubt the reverse would be true for whatever it is that women go through.
Men Did Greater Things When It Was Harder To See Boobs
Not nearly as touched on, but a major problem, is that not only are men highly oriented in this direction, but at the point at which its realized its like flipping a switch that men can't get back from. This is mentioned in the excellent podcast Catholic Stuff You Should Know. Men really can't' get back from where they started off, once they go down this path (and yes, I'm not going to fill it all in). It's sometime wondered "how" Catholic Priests can endure their celibacy, and it should be noted that St. Paul advised that unless the person had the grace and call to do it, they shouldn't attempt it. Most Priest who are truly called not only have that calling and grace, but they've likely never gotten to the point where the breaker was switched. Once it is, enduring the celibacy would be difficult in the extreme, and we note that in fact not all have endured it.
The second video is on three different topics.
The first is how men handle insecurity and stress, which often is very aggressive, or at least some form of aggression. The other way tends to be through addictive behavior.
The prior set of statues took the relationship so seriously that it was somewhat difficult to contract in the first place, had very serious implications from day one, and was very difficult to break. By being difficult to break, it protected first children, but then it protected the married men and women themselves.
This is not to say that all marriages were always rosy, but truth be known, the majority of marriages that break up do so due to transitory matters. That's why divorce originally required proof of something serious. Critics of the old statutes claimed that this forced people, and they usually mean "women" by people, to make up lies to obtain a divorce, and lying did indeed occur. Missed in that is that the fact that lying was occurring mean that what was being claimed, such as mental cruelty, didn't really exist. It was all just a matter of feelings.
That it is a matter of transitory feelings is borne out by the evidence. At a bare minimum, it's reported that 27% of women and 32% of men regret their divorces, or are willing to admit that they do. Given the nature of such reporting, we can probably easily assume that the real percentages approach at least 40%, if not higher.
Taken out of that, of course, are the percentages of those who divorce who simply kill themselves. Suicide being a risk due to divorce is very well established, although statistics associated with the percentage that take this tragic route are hard to come by, with men being nine times more likely to kill themselves following or during a divorce than women. That last statistic is particularly interesting, as there's something about men that causes them to take that approach at a much higher rate than women, although suicide is an increased risk for men and women due to divorce. Men, it is well known, tend to lose their social structure upon marrying, and it tends to devolve, over time, down to their wife. Again, looking back to old wisdom, the Old Testament informs:
Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
They do indeed, and this does indeed become the case. It's really easy to find examples of a wife's family essentially becoming the family of her husband, but it's much less common the other way around, in spite of what many people assume. Men getting divorced tend to lose their entire families as a result, their wife, their children, and their wife's family, with nowhere to go. The failure is so existential, they'd simply rather die. Women suffer to, but the classic "going back to her parents" is an option for them. Men don't "go back to their parents". They go back to new dwellings alone.
Suicide is now so common with divorce that its frequently discussed in various divorce related circles, including legal ones. Interestingly, the tragedy frequently is followed by the comment that if a person is edging towards this during the divorce in an open way, it should basically be disregarded, as that's manipulative. At some level, that's an incredibly self-interested set of views. Self-slaughter if never the right answer, and from a Christian prospective, it's a mortal sin. But the people who state "I feel guilty because my spouse killed himself" often really should feel just that. They abandoned their vows and the other person fell into despair, so yes, you should feel guilty, and moreover, you in particularly should not "move on" into another relationship having helped kill, quite literally, your prior one.
All of this is also why the death rate associated with men is also falsely low. Some go home and kill themselves sooner or later, but some simply drink themselves to death, or purposely engage in a lifestyle that will shorten their lives. Some just die, broken-hearted. Indeed, a bona fide medical condition, takotsubo cardiomyopathy, or “broken heart syndrome,” occurs in a certain percentage of otherwise healthy people, killing 5% o those who obtain it, and causing long term health effects for 20% of those who aren't killed by it but survive. In extreme cases, a related psychological condition results in a mental collapse in which a healthy person just gives up the will to live and ceases all efforts to do so, resulting in death coming within the span of a week unless people catch it and intervene.
Oh well, right? We've moved on to the brave new legal world where the facts are made up and the answers don't matter, and just have to live with it.
No we don't. There are things that can, and should, be done. But what can be done?
Be honest about the relationship between men and women.
It's ironic that in the age of freely available information, and great advances in society, that what people have learned is the mechanics of sex, but nothing about its existential nature. This is a root part of the problem.
And I'm using the term "sex" advisably, not "marriage".
If the defenders of Catholic annulments are to be credited, the reason that so many are granted is that people just don't grasp the nature of what they're getting into. As noted above, I'm pretty skeptical on that, but there's at least something to that. Women don't seem to realize that once they become sexually active with a man he can't go back to the status quo ante. They also, in many instances, don't realize (and again, Reddit is full of this stuff) that once the vows are exchanged and the presents opened, they can't really expect a return to the days of care and cuddling. For that matter, once children are born they're not getting back there either. They will have achieved exactly what the New Testament provides, literally:
That is why a man leaves his father and mother and clings to his wife, and the two of them become one body.
He's not going to get over the "clinging".
If the authors of The Catholic Gentlemen are correct, women need to grasp this. But there's a lot that men need to grasp as well. And before we depart on this topic, we'll note, at least in undamaged women, and a lot are damaged, the psychological union that this creates exists too.
When I was looking up stuff for this post, one of the things I just ran across was a post by a woman who had initiated a divorce. Still convinced that she was correct in doing so, she was baffled by why she was repeatedly thrown into lamenting the divorce and the loss of her husband. Of course, the Redditors came in with all sorts of "grieving" statement, and in a way they were right. But the reality of it is that she tried to cut something down that was within herself and killed it so it didn't die a natural death. As that attempt at murder, and indeed it’s a type of self-murder given the nature of marriage, is ineffective, her DNA was telling her what society could not. Her divorce is false. She wasn't the person she was before she attempted to divorce.
It's here where the videos linked in can do a real service. Societally, we lie about sex all the time and have damaged people enormously as a result. What we've essentially done is to encourage people to get on the perversion and decay train, and a lot have boarded it. Then we're surprised by the result. To give an odd example, everyone was surprised when "America's Dad" Bill Cosby turned out to be a serial sexual pervert. But why? We knew that he hung out at the Playboy Mansion and everything associated with Playboy ended in perversion, long term.
This obviously goes beyond marriage, of course, and gets towards being honest about our psychology as a species, which we aren't. We can pretend that the old standards went away, but the old DNA is still there.
What can be done under the current law
Part of the reason, indeed a lot of the reason, things have gotten so bad is that divorce lawyers, have failed to really examine the law much, with rare exceptions.
They should.
Quite frankly, it'll probably take conventional civil litigators to do it.
But what can be done?
Domestic lawyers really don't look at the law much. They have just gotten used to "this is how things are done". An example of that is Wyoming's "no fault" divorce statute, which isn't really no fault. The Wyoming Supreme Court required proof on irreconcilability in a case for the first time this past year, which means it took somebody fifty years to wake up to the fact that the law requires the proof, although the case was very unique, however.
Going back to the old law
We remind people of this:
People constantly imagine that when a mistake is made, and absolting hte old law here was a mistake, you "can't go back".
Of course you can go back.
There actually is a movemen in the nation to move away from no fault divorce. But to get back to the old law society will have to go a bit further back indeed.
It should.
Divorce laws requiring fault should be reestablished, and the "heart balm" statutes brought back. It's those latter causes of action that, as far as I'm aware, which nobody has preposed to restore.
They should.
A societal reaction.
Finally, in order to really take this on, there needs to be a societal reaction, and this makes people very uncomfortable.
Very uncomfortable.
Part of the reason that we have so much divorce in our society is that we've allowed the conditions creating it. We've badly damaged the psychological makeup of our society over a seventy year period by losing what we knew about sex and the relationship between men and women. That's hard to come back from, but it needs to occur. It'll have to start occurring on an individual basis.
Even when I was a college student in the 80's it was still the case that people living together without being married was frowned upon, even if it was no longer really societally prohibited. Doing that on a non-married basis toys with the programmed in nature of sex and the relationship between the sexes in a major way. Indeed, in many societies earlier on, to do that was simply to create a married relationship that the couple was then stuck with. Even in early Christianity, as is so often forgotten, there was no marriage ceremony early on. The couple simply agreed to be married and moved in with each other.
Couples that "live together", as its now politely called, are creating a proto marriage whether they wish to or not, at least within themselves. If this is not going to be frowned upon, it ought to at least be acknowledged for what it really does.
Beyond that, and it would have to start there, the easy separations that have come into being should not be so easily tolerated. Couples break up and divorce, as we know, but it really doesn't have to be accepted by a party that didn't wish to, and if they didn't wish to, they should stand their ground in their status. And this is true, in my view, of religions annulments as well. To go against these, in Catholic terms, is regarded as absolutely shocking and subject the person who does it to attack. Well, proclaiming that you view the other party as engaging in a fraud won't make a person popular, but standing for what is true often doesn't.1
Footnotes:
While I'm aware that it will be a very unpopular thing to say, another aspect of this would be not to tolerate the divorce industry.
Like almost everything that plagues our society, there's a strong industrial element to all of this. The corruption of marriage in the first place, by which we mean the corruption of the relationship between men and women, was brought about in no small part due the pornography industry, which is a subset of the sex trade industry. As it took root, the entertainment industry, the medical industry and the legal industry became highly involved with it.
Law in American society has become an industry, and as noted, it's very tied up in it. Law, like medicine, was a profession, but the corrupting influence of money has very much corrupted it. Divorce litigation is its own industry. There's no reason to respect it, or those involved in it, including lawyers involved in it.
The Virgin Mary appears to Sr. Agnes Sasagawa at Akita, Japan, for the third and final time, telling her:
My dear daughter, listen well to what I have to say to you. You will inform your superior
.As I told you, if men do not repent and better themselves, the Father will inflict a terrible punishment on all humanity. It will be a punishment greater than the deluge, such as one will never seen before. Fire will fall from the sky and will wipe out a great part of humanity, the good as well as the bad, sparing neither priests nor faithful. The survivors will find themselves so desolate that they will envy the dead. The only arms which will remain for you will be the Rosary and the Sign left by My Son. Each day recite the prayers of the Rosary. With the Rosary, pray for the Pope, the bishops and priests.
The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres...churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.
The demon will be especially implacable against souls consecrated to God. The thought of the loss of so many souls is the cause of my sadness. If sins increase in number and gravity, there will be no longer pardon for them.
With courage, speak to your superior. He will know how to encourage each one of you to pray and to accomplish works of reparation.
It is Bishop Ito, who directs your community.
You have still something to ask? Today is the last time that I will speak to you in living voice. From now on you will obey the one sent to you and your superior.
Pray very much the prayers of the Rosary. I alone am able still to save you from the calamities which approach. Those who place their confidence in me will be saved.
The prior two messages were:
July 6, 1973
My daughter, my novice, you have obeyed me well in abandoning all to follow me. Is the infirmity of your ears painful? Your deafness will be healed, be sure. Does the wound of your hand cause you to suffer? Pray in reparation for the sins of men. Each person in this community is my irreplaceable daughter. Do you say well the prayer of the Handmaids of the Eucharist? Then, let us pray it together."
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, truly present in Holy Eucharist, I consecrate my body and soul to be entirely one with Your Heart, being sacrificed at every instant on all the altars of the world and giving praise to the Father pleading for the coming of His Kingdom.
Please receive this humble offering of myself. Use me as You will for the glory of the Father and the salvation of souls.
"Most holy Mother of God, never let me be separated from Your Divine Son. Please defend and protect me as Your Special Child. Amen.
When the prayer was finished, the Heavenly Voice said: "Pray very much for the Pope, Bishops, and Priests. Since your Baptism you have always prayed faithfully for them. Continue to pray very much...very much. Tell your superior all that passed today and obey him in everything that he will tell you. He has asked that you pray with fervor.
August 3, 1973
My daughter, my novice, do you love the Lord? If you love the Lord, listen to what I have to say to you.
It is very important...You will convey it to your superior.
Many men in this world afflict the Lord. I desire souls to console Him to soften the anger of the Heavenly Father. I wish, with my Son, for souls who will repair by their suffering and their poverty for the sinners and ingrates.
In order that the world might know His anger, the Heavenly Father is preparing to inflict a great chastisement on all mankind. With my Son I have intervened so many times to appease the wrath of the Father. I have prevented the coming of calamities by offering Him the sufferings of the Son on the Cross, His Precious Blood, and beloved souls who console Him forming a cohort of victim souls. Prayer, penance and courageous sacrifices can soften the Father's anger. I desire this also from your community...that it love poverty, that it sanctify itself and pray in reparation for the ingratitude and outrages of so many men.
Recite the prayer of the Handmaids of the Eucharist with awareness of its meaning; put it into practice; offer in reparation (whatever God may send) for sins. Let each one endeavor, according to capacity and position, to offer herself entirely to the Lord.
Even in a secular institute prayer is necessary. Already souls who wish to pray are on the way to being gathered together. Without attaching to much attention to the form, be faithful and fervent in prayer to console the Master."Is what you think in your heart true? Are you truly decided to become the rejected stone? My novice, you who wish to belong without reserve to the Lord, to become the spouse worthy of the Spouse, make your vows knowing that you must be fastened to the Cross with three nails. These three nails are poverty, chastity, and obedience. Of the three, obedience is the foundation. In total abandon, let yourself be led by your superior. He will know how to understand you and to direct you.
A solid theological opinion, such as held by such as Jimmy Akin, is that messages from the Virgin Mary, when they occur (and no Catholic is obligated to regard them as genuine), are specific for their time. He feels, in this instance, that the warning from Our Lady pertained to the period in issue.
The message, however, has been getting a lot of attention recently, in part due to the Synod. It's the following line that such people are focused on:
The work of the devil will infiltrate even into the Church in such a way that one will see cardinals opposing cardinals, bishops against bishops. The priests who venerate me will be scorned and opposed by their confreres...churches and altars sacked; the Church will be full of those who accept compromises and the demon will press many priests and consecrated souls to leave the service of the Lord.
Am I adopting this view? No, I'm not adopting any view at all. But I will note that the rapid expression of moral laxity that some clerics, including Bishops and Cardinals, are now expressing, is distressing. It tends to fly in the face of human experience, and I'd argue evolutionary biology, as well as seemingly the long standing positions of the Church, dating back to St. Paul.
Sr. Agnes Sasagawa remains alive fifity years later.
On the same day, everyone on board Aeroflot Flight 964 was killed with the Tu-104 crashed on its approach at Moscow. Aeroflot is the world's most dangerous major airline.
Gordie How was joined by his sons Marty and Mark for the Houston Aeros opening World Hockey Association match against the Los Angeles Sharks, the first time father and sons had played in that fashion.
Rich Men North of Richmond, which is independently produced, I think, had made a big Internet and music scene splash, and frankly, not because it's good.
It is, as of this writing, on Billboard's Hot 100.
The ballad is played by Oliver Anthony, a genuine blue collar Virginian, apparently. All of his music videos seem to be filmed in a heavily wooded lot, which also appears to be genuine, although the rural South provides a certain cache in country music to such an extent that a Canadian band has even affected it, calling itself The Dead South. All of Anthony's music is played on a Resonator Guitar, a type of guitar I normally call a Dobro. I associate resonated guitars with the blues, not with country music, so this is a bit odd in and of itself.
How I imagine a guitar with a resonator properly being used.
Fans have gushed on the "return" of "real" or "authentic" country music, and this may indeed be the first genuine example of authentic country music to become a big hit in decades. Even 1st Lt. Austin von Letkemann, the author (host? mc?) of the wickedly funny Army satire series Mandatory Fun Day mentioned it the other day, as a real fan, citing Colter Wall at the same time. Wall is authentic, that's for sure, but in a different genre, genuine Western, i.e., cowboy, music.
But I don't think it's the music that boosted Anthony's song to the top of the C&W charts. It's the content. Consider the lyrics:
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare
Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down
Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Rich Man North of Richmond, it might be noted, comes hard on the heels of In A Small Town, by Jason Aldean.
Consider its lyrics:
Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk
Carjack an old lady at a red light
Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store
Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like
Cuss out a cop, spit in his face
Stomp on the flag and light it up
Yeah, ya think you're tough
Well, try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town
Got a gun that my granddad gave me
They say one day they're gonna round up
Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck
Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town
Full of good ol' boys, raised up right
If you're looking for a fight
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town
See how far ya make it down the road
Around here, we take care of our own
You cross that line, it won't take long
For you to find out, I recommend you don't
Try that in a small town
Try that in a small town
Ooh-ooh
Try that in a small town
Aldean, I'd note, isn't from a small town. He's' from Macon, Georgia, population 150,000 or so, so it's a mid-sized city. And In A Small Town isn't real country, but rather country and enjoyed the same popularity.
Both of these songs immediately became populist anthems. So much so that none other than liberal economist Robert Reich, whom this blog has an obvious love/hate relationship, just posted on the song, with frankly a typically disappointing analysis.
Reich offers his view, but he's wrong on what's going on here, at least in part, and certainly wrong on the fix. Like other left wing economists in the United States, Reich is a corporate capitalist, which is also what all the right wing economists are. Reich correctly believes that the system has gone wonky to the detriment of the working class (whatever the current working class may be), but he fails to grasp, as nearly every economist in the United States and perhaps the Western World, or maybe even the planet, that the economy is supposed to serve average lives and average lives come first. I.e., it's 1) my life and; 2) I need to work. Not I'm a worker in a glorious worker's state and work will exalt me, or I'm a consumer in a glorious consumption state and consumption will exalt me, which are effectively the flip side of corporate capitalism.
So what's going on here?
Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't. Neither right nor left economists get it. For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.
Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all. Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).
Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics. Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist. He can't be considered one, however. He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.
1. 39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏
2. As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony
3. I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it.
Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it
4. As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛 the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥
5. And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.
And there are a lot more.
Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare
Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down
Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:
1. He has "an old soul".
2. The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.
3. He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.
4. He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).
Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .
There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy. Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now. One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.
Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.
But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.
If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pudits claim, its definately not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.
The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion. People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?
Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.
One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.
Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't. Neither right nor left economists get it. For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.
Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all. Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).
Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics. Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist. He can't be considered one, however. He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.
You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.
1. 39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏
2. As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony
3. I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it.
Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it
4. As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛 the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥
5. And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.
And there are a lot more.
Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
So I can sit out here and waste my life away
Drag back home and drown my troubles away
It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I wish politicians would look out for miners
And not just minors on an island somewhere
Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat
And the obese milkin' welfare
Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds
Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds
Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground
'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down
Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to
For people like me and people like you
Wish I could just wake up and it not be true
But it is, oh, it is
Livin' in the new world
With an old soul
These rich men north of Richmond
Lord knows they all just wanna have total control
Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do
And they don't think you know, but I know that you do
'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end
'Cause of rich men north of Richmond
I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day
Overtime hours for bullshit pay
Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:
1. He has "an old soul".
2. The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.
3. He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.
4. He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).
Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .
There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy. Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now. One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.
Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.
But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.
If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pundits claim, it's definitely not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.
The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion. People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?
Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.
One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.
A meme version of the economics of the 1950s. . . dealing with more than economics. This depiction of the 50s drives commentators nuts, who decry it as a myth, but there's more than a little truth to it, both in what it states, and in what it otherwise depicts.
Americans tend to look back to the 1950s as some sort of golden age, and have a really mythologized view of the era. Be that as it may, in the 50s, most men could in fact support a family on their income alone, and not just from white collar jobs but from blue collar jobs. Not only could most men do it, but most men did do it. As late as the 1970s, a lot of husbands actually objected to their wives working, whereas now most married women not only do work, but must work. Perhaps an error in here, however, is that in the 50s that a lot of people were going to college. In reality, in 1950 only 7.3% of men had a college degree and only 5.2% of women did, which by 1960 was 10.3% and 6% respectively. This means, however, that a university degree was like gold. Of interest, both of my mother's parents had university degrees, which is phenomenal given that they obtained them in the early 20th Century. Neither of my father's parents did. Also of note, my mother had a college degree, an AS, but she obtained in the 1970s and was not a high school graduate due to the Great Depression, where has my father had a DDS and his brother and one of his sisters attended university in the 1940s/1950s.
The 50s through the early 1970s really reflect post World War Two conditions, however, and might not be the best era to look at. The 40s can't be looked at either, due to World War Two, nor can the 30s, due to the Great Depression. You really have to get back to the 10s and 20s for economies to compare to, with some comparison from later decades. Any way you look at it, however, a lot more families were supported from a single, usually male, income, but it was also the case that a lot more women always worked than is recognized.
Myths have power, however, and they also reflect aspects of reality as a rule. Beowulf may not have slain a dragon in Sweden, but a warrior named Bear (Bee Wolf) probably was an early Scandinavia warrior vassal of note. There really was a big battle at Troy, and it probably did start off as a totally juvenile spat over a girl that somebody regarded as a babe, although it's likely there was more to it than that. Arthur wasn't a chivalric knight, but somebody the legend was based on, probably was a British Roman who did take on the invading Teutons in defense of Roman Britain heroically before going down on a battlefield. There was indeed an era, not long ago, when a high school education could bring a person a living wage for not only the graduate, but a spouse and kids, and provide a middle income life.
And there was also a time during which, as harsh as the reality is, that you weren't in grocery store lines behind people who are paying for food with assistance, but who had money for tattoos, and who have suspended any regard for their personal appearance.
This is all obvious to people who are barely eeking by, but who know that their grandparents, with no more education than they have, did relatively well.
To add to it, although only subtly grasped, people are also aware, even as they participate in it, that the country's become a moral sewer. The problem, in a way, is not that Jeffrey Epstein is uncommon, but rather than he is common in a way. Only the rich, of course, used him as a procurer for teenage prostitutes, but the entertainment industry is essentially a society wide procurer for cinematic prostitution that has become increasingly debased.
All that does involve wealth, but part of the underlying tone, and one that people like Reich can't seem to grasp, is that the American political left insists that it all conduct be accepted and each person's choices, no matter how self-destructive, anti-natural, debased, or weird, be celebrated. People very well know that the entire movement to support surgical gender mutilation of children is wrong, for example, as well as deeply weird, but the left demands it be celebrated, just as it insists that what nearly amount to homosexual sex manuals be placed in public schools with public funds. It is not that the standard bearers of the right are moral people. Trump is a serial polygamist. It's rather that there's a difference in promoting immorality and demanding that it be accepted and distancing policy from it, even if you engage in immorality yourself. Double standards abound, but what the unhappy class is looking at doesn't seem to be grasped.
Indeed, as the left repeatedly fails to grasp in regards to the that unhappy class, is that the class itself may not really apply the standards it mourns all that deeply, in regard to at least some of them. Critics from the left, like Robert Reich, keep branding the movement "Christian Nationalist", as do some critics from the right, such as Susan Stubson. They're both in correct. Christian Nationalist take the practice of Christianity really seriously. Southern Cultural Christian Populist, however, have a world roughly framed out by the Southern Baptist Convention, the pre-1970 Episcopal and Methodist Church's, or the African Methodist Church loosely in mind, but as a framework, not as a fortress. Put another way, Christian Nationalist look to the Apostolic age and know what that meant, and aren't really comfortable completely with people who sit around watching NASCAR on Sundays. Southern Cultural Christians are perfectly comfortable with watching NASCAR on Sundays and attend church for weddings, funerals, Easter and Christmas. They aren't the same thing.
But what both are uncomfortable with, but in different ways, is a liberalism that insists that genders can be changed, and there's nothing wrong with books in public schools that explore sodomy. That exceeds the boundaries of the loosely defined structure for Southern Cultural Christians and is definitely gravely immoral to Christian Nationalists, as well as frankly gravely immoral to any Christians of any stripe who are serious about what their faiths hold.
In 2008, I stopped at the liquor store on my way home from work to buy a six-pack of beer. It was late summer.
In the liquor store there were two young women, in their very early 20s, with a young man of the same age. One of the young women was holding a baby.
The girl, and that's really what she was, holding the baby was pretty, but in a trashy sort of way, and in the way that you know won't last. The other girl was not. Both young women were wearing t-shirts that were too small for them, and too tight to be decent. They were both wearing Daisy Dukes. The young man was shaking and incredibly disheveled. It was pretty clear that he was the father of the baby, equally clear that he and the young woman weren't married, and just as clear that he was a tweaker.
The pretty girl holding the baby had eyeliner and a proud visage, sort of like the pretty but trashy girls did back when I was in high school. They'd retained the eyeliner sort of make up that girls in junior high wore, back when I was in junior high, after girls of that age first started taking up makeup. Most girls abandoned that by high school, but the ones that were of a certain type didn't. That girl, the pretty one, was wearing an Obama for President t-shirt. I knew at that moment, well before the election, who would win.
The image that was on the girl's t-shirt. It wasn't "Hope" that they had a vested interest in.
Now, this isn't a comment on President Obama at all, but rather on something else, and that something else gets back to Rich Men North of Richmond.
The young man in that group is likely dead by now. Tweaking in his early 20s, it's unlikely he survived another fifteen years. The girl who the mother likely is, and if she was 21 then, she's 36 now. She's also likely in the 300 lbs category the song referenced, the signs of that already being there. And indeed, what she was supporting, and likely at least her female cohort, wasn't "hope", as Obama was espousing, it was government assistance. The child, now 15, has probably spent his or her entire life on it.
And that, in some vague sort of way, is what Oliver Anthony is lamenting.
All of these people likely descended from people who had held blue collar jobs. But a modern society reconstructed in a liberal image had turned them into wards of the government in some ways, and they weren't ashamed of it. Their attachment to any sort of conventional morality had lapsed, perhaps beyond repair, and they were reproducing without structure and raising a generation behind them, perhaps as they'd been raised, that recalls Philippians, "Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things." They didn't go on to be Megan Rapinoe, who would be just about their age, almost undoubtedly, but probably heavily tattooed, and living on the funds generated by others.
A large number of abandoned rust belt and other blue collar Americans are well aware of this, even if they aren't necessarily beyond some of the call of that themselves.
That's what liberal pundits are missing, and that's what populist, some sincere and some not, have picked up on.
El Paso Sheriff : What's it mean? What's it leadin' to? You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago, that I'd see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses, I just flat-out wouldn't have believed you.
Ed Tom Bell : Signs and wonders. But I think once you quit hearing "sir" and "ma'am," the rest is soon to foller.
El Paso Sheriff : Oh, it's the tide. It's the dismal tide.
No Country For Old Men.
And that's why their message is failing.
And for traditional conservatives, as, well as liberals, there may now be, by this time, something even scarier at work. . .
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