Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 101st edition. The Vanadal in the museum.

Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 101st edition. The V...: 

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 101st edition. The Vanadal in the museum.

Of all the countries in the world, we and we only have any need to create artificially the patriotism which is the birthright of other nations.

Agnes Repplier, Americanism, in The Atlantic, 1916.

 

A letter from the illegitimate Trump occupational regime in the Oval Office to the Smithsonian:

The Honorable Lonnie G. Bunch III

Secretary, Smithsonian Institution

1000 Jefferson Dr SW

Washington, DC 20560

Subject: Internal Review of Smithsonian Exhibitions and Materials

Dear Secretary Bunch,

We wish to begin by expressing our appreciation for the brief tour you gave us recently of the National Museum of American History and the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and by acknowledging your work on behalf of the Smithsonian Institution, as well as the Institution’s role in shaping public understanding of American history and culture. We are completely aligned with your statement that the Smithsonian is “a welcoming place of knowledge and discovery for all Americans.” We are grateful that you and the Board of Regents have expressed your commitment to the non-partisan, educational mission of this great institution.

As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Nation’s founding, it is more important than ever that our national museums reflect the unity, progress, and enduring values that define the American story. In this spirit, and in accordance with Executive Order 14253, Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, we will be leading a comprehensive internal review of selected Smithsonian museums and exhibitions. This initiative aims to ensure alignment with the President’s directive to celebrate American exceptionalism, remove divisive or partisan narratives, and restore confidence in our shared cultural institutions.

This review is a constructive and collaborative effort — one rooted in respect for the Smithsonian’s vital mission and its extraordinary contributions. Our goal is not to interfere with the day-to-day operations of curators or staff, but rather to support a broader vision of excellence that highlights historically accurate, uplifting, and inclusive portrayals of America’s heritage.

The review will focus on several key areas:

1. Public-facing Content: A review of exhibition text, wall didactics, websites, educational materials, and digital and social media content to assess tone, historical framing, and alignment with American ideals.
2. Curatorial Process: A series of interviews with curators and senior staff to better understand the selection process, exhibition approval workflows, and any frameworks currently guiding exhibition content.
3. Exhibition Planning: A review of current and future exhibitions, with particular attention to those planned for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.
4. Collection Use: Evaluation of how existing materials and collections are being used or could be used to highlight American achievement and progress, including whether the Smithsonian can make better use of certain materials by digitizing or conveying to other institutions.
5. Narrative Standards: The development of consistent curatorial guidelines that reflect the Smithsonian’s original mission.

Initially, our review will focus on the following museums. Additional museums will be reviewed in Phase II.

• National Museum of American History
• National Museum of Natural History
• National Museum of African American History and Culture
• National Museum of the American Indian
• National Air and Space Museum
• Smithsonian American Art Museum
• National Portrait Gallery
• Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden

Materials Request

To initiate this process, we respectfully request that each of the museums listed above designate a primary point of contact and provide the following materials to our team (including for online content):

1. 250th Anniversary Programming
   1. Exhibition plans, draft concepts, and event outlines related to America 250.
   1. Supporting materials such as proposed artwork, descriptive placards, exhibition catalogs, event themes, and lists of invited speakers and events.
2. Current Exhibition Content
   1. Catalog and programs for all current and ongoing exhibitions, including budgets.
   1. Digital files of all wall didactics, placards, and gallery labels currently on display.
3. Traveling and Upcoming Exhibitions
   1. Full index of scheduled traveling exhibitions (2026-2029).
   1. Proposals, projected schedules, and preliminary budgets for upcoming exhibitions over the next three years.
4. Internal Guidelines and Governance
   1. Curatorial and staff manuals, job descriptions, and organizational charts.
   1. Documentation outlining the chain of command for exhibition approvals, scheduling, and content review.
   1. Internal communications or memos pertaining to exhibition or artwork selection and approval processes.
5. Index of the Permanent Collection
   1. Access to an inventory of all permanent holdings.
6. Educational Materials
   1. Teacher guides, student resources, and supplementary educational content linked to current exhibitions.
7. Digital Presence
   1. URLs and descriptions of official museum websites and exhibition-related microsites.
8. External Partnerships
   1. A list of active partnerships with outside contributors including artists, historians, nonprofits, and advocacy organizations.
9. Grant-Related Documentation
   1. Copies of grant applications and funding agreements tied to past or current exhibitions, particularly those that influence content or presentation.
   1. Current artists featured in museum’s galleries that received a Smithsonian grant.
10. Surveys and other evaluations of visitor experience
    1. Responses to surveys and other forms of evaluating the experience of visitors to the Smithsonian’s museums and users of digital content.

Timeline

To ensure clarity and coordination across all parties involved, we have developed the following implementation timeline:

Within 30 days of receipt of this letter, we anticipate:

• Each museum to submit all requested materials outlined in the first four bullet points above, including current exhibition descriptions, draft plans for upcoming shows, America 250 programming materials, and internal guidelines used in exhibition development.
• Review of America 250 exhibition and program planning and connect with curators and staff about their specific proposals.
• A staff liaison from each museum will be designated to serve as the primary point of contact throughout the review process.
• Our team will begin on-site observational visits, conducting walkthroughs of current exhibitions to document themes, visitor experience, and visual messaging.

Within 75 days:

• Museums are asked to submit the remaining requested documentation (items 5 through 10), including promotional literature, grant data, educational materials, and guided tour content.

• Our team will begin scheduling and conducting voluntary interviews with curators and senior staff. These conversations will help us better understand each museum’s goals and the broader curatorial vision guiding the institution.
• Each museum should finalize and submit its updated plan to commemorate America’s 250th anniversary and ensure coordination with the White House Salute to America 250 Task Force to align messaging and public engagement.

Within 120 days:

• Museums should begin implementing content corrections where necessary, replacing divisive or ideologically driven language with unifying, historically accurate, and constructive descriptions across placards, wall didactics, digital displays, and other public-facing materials.

If all benchmarks are met on schedule, we anticipate completing our review and preparing a final report for your review in early 2026. This report will include museum-specific assessments, institutional trends, and constructive recommendations for future exhibition strategy.

We view this process as a collaborative and forward-looking opportunity—one that empowers museum staff to embrace a revitalized curatorial vision rooted in the strength, breadth, and achievements of the American story. By focusing on Americanism—the people, principles, and progress that define our nation—we can work together to renew the Smithsonian’s role as the world’s leading museum institution.

We look forward to working alongside you and your team to ensure these iconic institutions remain vibrant, trusted, and inspiring for generations to come.

Lindsey Halligan

Special Assistant to the President and Senior Associate Staff Secretary

Vince Haley

Assistant to the President and Director of the Domestic Policy Council

Russell Vought

Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Management and Budget

The term "Americanism" goes way back.  I know that it was used by Theodore Roosevelt, for example, who as an advocate of it.  Indeed, he delivered more than one speech on the topic.  I'm a fan of Theodore Roosevelt, although less than I once was, and I don't admire his jingoistic advocation of Americanism, although it has to be realized that it came at a different point in our history, and tended to combat a growing sense of internationalism as well as "hyphenation" in various American identities.  

Starting particularly in the 1920s, Americanism began to change from a focus on celebrating an American identity, to being pro White Anglo Saxon Protestant.  Roosevelt delivered a speech to The Knights of Columbus at  Carnegie Hall on October 12, 1915, for example, which meant that the solidly American former President of Dutch ancestry, who was a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, felt comfortable addressing a body of Catholics.  Indeed, that was somewhat the point as Catholics were by that time a  major voting block, but WASP American culture detested them and saw them as alien.  Roosevelt didn't want them to be alien, but American, meaning he was not only taking a stand against people identifying as "Irish American" or "German American" (two major Catholic groups), but also as White Anglo Saxon Protestants.  

Roosevelt was not a racist.

By Woodrow Wilson's administration, a lot of Americans were reviving the thought that if you were an American, you needed to be a WASP.  The Red Scare contributed to that in a major way.  The country illegally deported people simply for being on the radical left, including some who were American citizens.

Imagine. . . deporting an American for not being the right kind of American. . . sound familiar?

This sort of Americanism became strong in the 1920s, although roots of it were clearly there before, and it continued on into the 1930s as sort of a plant of some of the opponents of Franklin Roosevelt, although Americanism took a real hit during that time period.  It revived, however, in an ugly fashion after World War Two were it was once again associated with the far right.

It's been a feature of the revived post Reagan far right for some time, and has really been picked up by the populists supporting Trump. They cloak themselves with the flag and tattoo what they think are patriotic things on their forearms, not appreciating that our forbearers' might not necessarily be all that keen on their views.

Part of what is happening here is that Americans have frankly always had a difficult relationship with history, and they still do.  Americans as a group do not know their history well, and tend to reduce it to highlights, and often associate those highlights with patriotic bromides.  The Mayflower passengers were, for instance, a bunch of people seeking religious freedom in the American mind, not a minoritarian Protestant sect that neither the English or the Dutch were keen on tolerating, and they were not tolerant themselves (and, to add to it, most of the Mayflower passengers were not "pilgrims".  The American Revolution was all about and only about liberty, people believe, and didn't start off as a protest over tea tariffs (oh my) and have as a goal unrestrained settling of Native lands and forced conversion of the Quebecois to the Church of England.  Half the country seemingly believes that the Civil WAr wasn't about slavery, when that's all it was about.  The Winning of the West doesn't feature any uncomfortable colonial aspects of it. And the dropping of the Atomic Bomb was certainly moral.

Like many things in our current culture, the counter revolution going on here has its roots in a post Vietnam War revolution which really did go too far.  Early radicals, like those before the end of World War Two, often were in fact really radical, but they often really loved their country two.  One Marine Corps officer who won the Silver Star during the Second World War, for instance, was an avowed Communist who had fought in the Spanish Civil War.  Today people like Donald Trump and Chuck Gray would go into screeds about him, just as Trump has about Zohran Mamdani.  A person doesn't have to be, however, conservative or Christian to genuinely love the United States.

Going back, however, to the post Vietnam War Era, it seemingly was the case that during the war some on the American left came to actively detest their country, and as part of the general culture of the times, the band aid was ripped off of some of our problematic past.  For people with a serious interest in, and knowledge of, history, much of that was irritating, but there were those who were generally shocked by it as their knowledge of history apparently stopped at 4th Grade.  Even now, for example, I'll have people come up to me who are reading A People's History of the United States and cite something as if its a blisteringly knowledgeable new revelation.  I'm not interested in anarcho-socialist Zinn's interpretation of US history much, and I'm always skeptical of anyone who titles anything as "A People's" anything, as that claims too much for your work and yourself, but still, the "revelations" people come up with are topics that anyone who graduated from high school should have a pretty good command of.

But then, many Americans have no real command of history.  Entire events in American history, and world history, are unknown, I think, to the vast majority of Americans, which makes them easy targets for revisionist of the right and the left.

We're seeking a lot of far right revisionism going on right now.  This sort of stuff is part of it.

Last edition:

CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 100th edition. Downfall, Despair, and hoping for DeGaulle.

Labels: Charles de Gaulle, Christian Nationalism, Commentary, Culture, Culture Wars, Greed, National Conservatism, Patrick Dineen, Politics, Populism, R. R. Reno, Stupidity, The Second Trump Administration, United States, Zeitgeist

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: 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

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 69th Edition. TDS, Va...: 

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.

The really ugly American

Trump’s win shows us who we really are

An excellent, and exactly correct, article.

And who we are isn't very pretty.

Many people worried that the election of Donald Trump, a thoroughly reprehensible man, would mean the end of the American democracy.  It probably won't, but it does mark the complete end of the United States as a great nation in every sense. 

We have no claim, as of this last election, to any sort of exceptionalism.  A certain moral status, hard won and defended in the Civil War and the wars of the 20th Century has been forfeited, and for blisteringly limited self interest.  Indeed, much of the electorate, frankly, proved themselves ignorant, choosing the interests of billionaires over their own, based on mean and vindictive promises and a false vision of the past.  Others, limited in their  minds to a binary choice in which they felt compelled to choose between the threat of progressivism in the Democratic Party, which never saw a gender perversion or mental illness it didn't want to glorify and demand you do too, and a GOP which at least looked to some sort of sanity on such issues.  Yet others chose a narrow issue, gun control, abortion, which they highly valued and made the leap.  Others were simply mad about being lied to for decades by the Democrats and pre Trump Republicans on matters like job exportation and immigration.

Not all Trump voters are alike by any means.

But there's only one Trump.

Since being elected he's insulted Canada repeatedly in a childish manner.  On the day I'm typing this out (originally), he's threatening Panama, suggesting we're going to demand a return of the Panama Canal.  Since then he's been demanding Greenland.

The amazing thing is that in spite of the utter lunacy of these ramblings, plenty have signed on board to back them.  People who wonder how the absurdities of the Nazi Party found acceptance after 1932 now know.

I don't expect Trump to serve out his term.  Behavior like this shows that the nation's incoming Chief Executive is returning to his middle school years, years which caused his parents to send him to military school, and that return is probably organic in a man who is flabby and ancient.  We'll see, of course, but it appears to at least me that the dementia train has left the station, as it earlier clearly did for Joe Biden.  

Merely having a chief executive this age is, frankly, dangerous.

At any rate, I suspect that backers of J. D. Vance are just wanting to give things a decent interval before a cabinet finding of non compos mentis is delivered.

I'm not a Vance fan, but the sooner, the better.

Trump Derangement Syndrome

One of our dear readers, who has I might note a truly excellent blog I keep meaning to link in here, gently noted that this blog suffers from Trump Derangement Syndrome.

It's a fair accusation.

As is evident, I just can't grasp why a thoughtful highly intelligent person like our reader would vote for Trump.  I  know plenty of them I might add.  Highly educated, very well spoken, very well read, individuals who voted for a person I find nearly loathsome.

I wish they could explain it to me.

I wonder too if they fear for the nation the way that those of us who recoil form Trump do.

I will note that I perfectly grasp why people didn't vote for Harris, and wouldn't have for Biden.  Biden's descent into incapacity aside, the Democratic Party has just become, well, weird in many ways.  I noted at the time that Obergefell was decided that disaster loomed, and frankly, I was spot on.  Contrary to Kennedy's naive assumptions about his legally bankrupt ruling, Obergefell really opened the doors of a sexual and sexually perverse pandora's box, although frankly that box had been unlocked in the post war by Kinsey and Masters.

By the way, there's actually an article in Psychology Today about TDS.

Anyhow, for the Trump supporters who are routinely insulted by my posts regarding Trump, but stop in to read anyhow, thanks for doing so, and if you can explain your support for the man, I'd appreciate your doing so.

I'll confess.  I feel that Trump should have been tried for sedition and should be in prison, so my view is indeed harsh and unyielding on him.  I hope I'm proved wrong, but I expect him to be a disaster.

Waiting in the wings

Vance in uniform, and not that of a military prep school

As noted, I'm pretty confined J. D. Vance is waiting in the wings, and isn't much more of a Trump fan than I am.  I also think as a National Conservative, he's the real deal.

Love him or hate him, Vance would have made a much better contrast to Harris than Trump.  Vance actually has an intellectual concept of where he wants the country to go, and it doesn't appear in any fashion to depend on Elon Musk personally arresting the decline in the North American birth rate.

Must is a National Conservative, as noted.  He couldn't have been elected in a race against Harris.   The National Conservatives, who ranks are filled by some real intellectuals, know that they have a very limited time to get in their man.. That time is limited to the next four years.  Vance won't be able to pull off a post Trump win in 2028, and they know it.  In order to make the reforms they want, and they are genuine and massive, they need to get Vance in before then, and that depends on Trump being gone.

Age may very well remove Trump, through death.  If it doesn't, my guess is dementia will.  Then we will have Vance, and that will be quite interesting.

Oligarchs.

Drone Bee.  By Guillaume Pelletier - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=59927223

A really interesting thing about the incoming Trump administration is the now open and obvious influence of the mega rich on it.  The most obvious example is the overarching presence of the world's most wealth many, South African Elon Musk, but he's far from the only one.

It wasn't all that long ago that Republicans continually suggested that mega rich Hungarian George Soros and Mark Zuckerberg were a big problem.  Even now, Wyoming Secretary of State Chuck Gray wants to do something about "Zuck Bucks".

Love of money, as we know, is the root of all evil, and and one thing it does is to buy power.  Absolute power, we're told, such as the U.S. Supreme Court has pretty much handed over to the Executive Branch, corrupts absolutely.

Something needs to be done about this and what that something is, quite frankly, includes taxation.  Populists have to decide if they want to be drone servants of their party, or the owners of their party in this regard.

So far, it looks like the drones have it.

The immigration spat

The best argument for doing away with H1B I can imagine.  Also, not only a crude dip into vulgarity, but an unfortunate sexual insult by a man who clearly knows that's now how that actually works, given his many progeny by many willing women.  And explain to me how Evangelicals feel that this camp is moral?

It is interesting, however, how a fight has suddenly broken out in the MAGA camp which is related to this.  The GOP campaign against immigrants in the general election blurred the lines between legal and illegal immigrants.  It was relatively clear that basically many hardcore Rust Belt and rural Trumpies didn't like immigrants in general.

There are, I'd note, real reasons to be concerned about the American immigration rate.  But for immigration, the US population would be falling, which contrary to widespread belief would frankly be a very good thing.  But demonizing immigrants is flat out wrong, and we're not actually having the conversation we should be, which would have a lot more to do with conservation, economics, and yes, culture, than whatever it is that we are arguing about.

One thing now that we are arguing about is H1B, a visa program.  I've seen an immigrant Pakistani Trumpy robustly claim that this program lets in illiterate people who can't speak English in Italian restaurants to, in contrast, Elon Must backing it on the basis that that he came in the country that way and as the world's richest sperm donor, he loves himself, and everyone else should too, as he's good for the country.

He's not good for the country.

Interestingly, there's some lingering questions if Musk violated the country's laws when he came in.  He probably didn't, but it's interesting.  If he did, and I'm not saying he did, that would make him one of those super nasty law breaking immigrants who should be back up and returned to their land of origin.

On other ironies which are worth noting, this spat has really taken weird turns.  Ann Coulter told Vivek Ramaswamy that she wouldn't have voted for him as he's of Indian extraction, which is as racist as can be, but at least honest.  Some Republicans are defending H1B, others are condemning it.

And Trump clearly is okay with some immigrants, such as ones he'll marry.  It makes me wonder what dinner talk is like at the old Trump homestead.

When things hit the news.

On this story, I had the odd experience of having somebody say the other day "I see you are now having trouble up there with immigrants too". They were from Texas, and this was a phone call.

I had to ask what he meant, but apparently the arrest of an illegal alien here made national news.

It's interesting in that this isn't all that newsworthy here.  I don't know why people would think otherwise, but rural states like Wyoming have had illegal aliens just as long as anyone else, and given the blue collar nature of work here, probably longer.

Gerontocracy

Not only are we developing an oligarch problem, it has a gerontocracy problem as well, which this past election certainly pointed out.  We have an ancient (and seemingly impaired) President, and an ancient, and rather odd acting, President Elect.

Trump is 78 years old, of course.  Locally, one of our Senators is 72, and the other 70.  Not young.  Our Congresswoman is a comparatively youthful 62.

Texas Republican Congresswoman Kay Granger is 81, and is now living in a memory care facility.  She hasn't cast a vote since July, which of course makes sense.  

Of note, she spent a year, starting in January 2023, as the chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.  That says something, and what it says is that mental decline can really be rapid.

Why, as a nation, are we comfortable with this?

On a positive, if perhaps sad note, she did not seek reelection.

The UK bans puberty blockers

The US should follow suit.

The entire "trans" movement is really based on an illusion of epic proportions.  We are, truly, born male and female while some are more masculine than others, or more feminine than others, boys are boys, as they say, and girls girls.  People who are confused on this point are, in reality, very few, and those who persistently are mentally ills.  Almost all teens who claim to be "trans", aren't and the overwhelming majority of them come out of it relatively quickly.  For that matter, adults who claim to be "trans" aren't.  

Puberty blockers are child abuse on the Aktion T4 and there's no excuse for it.

Back to the populists for a second, it's insanity like giving children puberty blockers that helps explain their rise.  In future years this behavior will be regarded the same way eugenics in Nazi Germany is now.  How mass lawsuits have not broken out is beyond me.  

Mjuk flicka.  Soft Girls, Kept Women, Feminist Women, and a More Natural Life.

ICELANDIC MILKMAID ON HER MORNING ROUND

This is a fine, sturdy pony standing so stockily for his photograph, and he can make light of his burden of buxom beauty with her heavy can of milk. She cares not for saddle or stirrups, for most of these island people are born to horseback, and her everyday costume amply serves the purpose of a riding-habit for this strapping Viking's daughter, with her long tresses shining in the breeze.  

(Original caption, of interest here I wouldn't call this young lady "buxom" or "strapping", but just healthy.  This might say something about how standards have changed over time.)

Mjuk flicka a Swedish term for "a kind pleasant" girl, but it sort of translates as "soft girl".  In this context its a bit of a trend, and one that's worrying feminist.

It probably should.

We've had other threads along these lines, but its fairly clear that a fair number of women have come to the conclusion that the push into the business and working world that came along in the 1970s hasn't really done them as much as a favor as the propaganda then and now would have it.  This recalls the TikTok breakdown some young woman had that's discussed here:

Women at work. "Whoever fought, for women to get jobs. . . . why?. . . . why did you do that?" Looking at women (and men) in the workplace, and modern work itself, with a long lens.

And also here:

A lamentation. The modern "world.*

One of the odd things that the "soft girl" is exhibiting is that she's an example of reinventing old social norms backwards and highly imperfectly, and that is concerning.  Rather than acting as a very traditional wife, she's essentially reduced herself to concubinage.  Her male supporter could sever ties at the drop of a hat.  She's serving in the traditional concubine role, free of any children or responsibility, and providing what we might charitably refer to as companionship.  This is bound not to go well, which reaching back to tradition without the duties of responsibilities associated it, usually does.

I can't help but note the contrast to the Mantilla Girls I continue to run into at Mass, including Christmas vigil. Due to being in a packed church, combined with my wife' s decision making process, we ended up in the cry room.  This followed a brief pre Mass trip to the balcony, where there was room, but then the long suffering spouse brought up 200 other options which sent us back down.  Anyhow, there was room in the cry room, which also contained one extended family with a baby.  The baby never cried.  One of the parishioners in the room was a Mantilla Girl, quite attractive and very nicely dressed.

Its interesting for a variety of reasons, including the contrast to the soft girl.  The Mantilla Girls have a much more realistic grasp of the world.

Mehr Mensch sein.

Related threads:

What the Young Want.* The Visual Testimony of the Trad Girls. The Authenticity Crisis, Part One.

i nolunt

Young Diognetus in the modern world.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 67th Edition. So you say you want a revolution?

Labels: 2020s, 2024, Aktion T4, Capitalism, Civil Unrest, Corporate Capitalism, Crime, Distributism, Distributist Lament, Donald Trump, Narodnaya Volya, Populism, Terrorism, The wealthy, Zeitgeist