The Agrarian's Lament: The Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A reminder to that it is time to be the people that founded the country.

The Agrarian's Lament: The Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A reminder to that it i...:   The Aerodrome: Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument. : This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald...

The Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A reminder to that it is time to be the people that founded the country.

 

The Aerodrome: Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument.: This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald Trump, which will go down as the most corrupt political era in U.S. h...

On the 250ths Anniversary of American Independence it'd do us well to recall that while the Revolution may have been lead by landed patricians, it was fought by landed yeoman.

It's a great misfortune to the country, or perhaps a timely reminder, of exactly how far we've fallen in that regard. We have, in the form of Donald J. Trump, a President, albeit an illegitimate one, who is the very symbol of what Americans rebelled against 250 years ago. This monumental palace coach should serve to remind us. 

Had Donald Trump been alive in 1776, he'd have been a Loyalist. 

At the end of the war he'd have been packed up to Canada to annoy the French, who at least would largely have not understood him.  Not, in his dementia, that we do either.

Washington on Blueskin.

George Washington owned his own mounts.  John Adams broke one of his own mounts as late as his 80s.  Taft kept a cow on the White House lawn.

Donald Trump flies back and forth to his golf resort in Florida on the American taxpayers dime.¹  And now, at the expense of some $400,000,000 taxpayer dollars, he's unveiled the new one, and gushes about its "luxury":

Boeing VC-25B Bridge. A shameful flying monument.

This blog was never intended to be political, but in the age of Donald Trump, which will go down as the most corrupt political era in U.S. history, it just can't be avoided.

The Federal Government, funded by the American taxpayers in the form of taxes, and by individuals and foreign governments in the form of loans, has taken delivery of one Boeing "VC-25B Bridge", a military conversion of a Boeing 747-8 originally built as a Boeing Business Jet.  The plane was delivered in 2012 to Qatar Amiri Flight and used by the House of Thani. In June 2023, it was delivered to Global Jet Isle of Man. The Qatari government gave it as a gift. . . if we assume governments really give gifts to other governments.  Poor little King Donny just wasn't happy with the existing Air Force One and given that he's in his last term he couldn't wait for new ones under construction to be completed.

After he leaves office, which given his advanced age and rapidly declining mental status is likely to be before his term expires, the airplane, which has cost the United States at least $400,000,000 in "upgrades" to make it work in its role as a royal coach for his majesty, will be transferred to his presidential library foundation.  Indeed, that will happen before his unfortunate illegitimate reign is over.

This is complete bullshit.

I've posted on this story, and this airplane, here before:

Air Force One.

Air Force One has been in the news a lot recently, and it  started before the Qatari proposal to give the United States, or Donald Trump (it isn't clear which) a luxury outfitted Boeing 747.

Technically "Air Force One" is a call sign, and merely denotes an airplane the Chief Executive is a passenger in.  If a President rode in an Air Force Cessna, that would be Air Force One.  But everyone knows that it refers to one of two Boeing VC-25s, militarized 747s, that are designated for the Presidents use.

RD-2

Interestingly, the first aircraft designated for Presidential use was a Navy airplane, an amphibious Douglas Dolphin RD-2 that was luxury outfitted for use by President Roosevelt.  It was used from 1933 to 1939, and obviously not for transglobal flight.  The President didn't really do extensive travel until World War Two.

Roosevelt's once used VC-54C.

In spite of concerns over commercial aviation being used to carry the President during the war, it was in fact used and it wasn 't until 1945 that a new designated Presidential aircraft was acquired, that being a  Secret Service reconfigured a Douglas C-54 Skymaster (VC-54C) which was named the Sacred Cow.  It contained a sleeping area, radiotelephone, and retractable battery-powered elevator to lift Roosevelt in his wheelchair. It's only use by Roosevelt was to fly the then dying President to Yalta.  Truman used it thereafter, but it was replaced by military DC-6 (VC-118) thereafter.

Truman's VC-118.

President Eisenhower, who of course knew planes well, to Lockheed C-121 Constellations, Columbine II and Columbine III. The Constellation was a very popular airplane at the time, and Douglas MacArthur also had one, that one spending many years after its service at the Natrona County International Airport on an abandoned runway.

Columbine II was the first Presidential aircraft to receive the designation Air Force One.

At the end of Eisenhower's Presidency Boeing 707s came in, in part because the Soviets were using a jet to transport their Premier.  707s remained through the Nixon era, giving good service in this role.

747s, as VC-25s, entered specialized manufacture for use as Air Force One during Reagan's administration, although the first one would enter service after that.  They've been used ever since.

These aren't normal 747s.  They are packed with communications and electronic warfare equipment in order to have combat survivability.  

Replacing the current two aircraft that are used as Air Force One is a topic that the Air Force started looking at quite a few years ago.  The 747 variant which the VC-25 isn't made anymore.  Production of 747s stopped in 2023 in favor of more modern aircraft.  Still, the airframe remains useful in this role, and after the Air Force started to look into options, updating a 747-8 appeared to be the best option.  Only Boeing was interested in the project anyway, and it will take a massive financial loss to do it.  

The aircraft that are being retrofitted for this role was built, originally, as a commercial airliner. The projected is a massive one, and the delivery date will be in 2027.

What the new Air Force Ones will look like.

Enter Qatar.

Qatar has offered to give the US (I guess) a luxury Boeing 747-8 for use as Air Force One until the other 747-8s are complete.  But here's the thing.  Boeing has been working on the complicated task fo converting the two existing 747-8s for this use for several years. After all, it's basically a combat aircraft.  All accepting the plane would do is give Boeing a third one to convert, which wouldn't be ready for years.

Trump is being childish about this, as he is about a lot of things.  He doesn't seem to grasp the nature of the aircraft, and likely a lot of other people don't as well.  In his case, this is inexcusable.  It's a combat airplane.

Frankly, it's a Cold War combat airplane.

Which gets to this.

The 747 was a big massive airliner in an era in which it was the queen of the sky. That era is over and airlines have moved on to more modern aircraft.  The world in which Ronald Reagan ordered 747s is gone as well.  It's still useful to have an aircraft that can be used in a global thermonuclear war, which is what it is, but that's not going to happen and it makes no sense to use it to go on weekend golfing trips to Florida.

But that's what Trump tends to use it for.

That raises an entire series of other questions, many of which have little to do with aircraft, but some of which do.  It's notable that other Presidents have used lighter aircraft for more mundane trips.  In November 1999, President Bill Clinton flew from Ankara, Turkey, to Cengiz Topel Naval Air Station outside Izmit, Turkey, aboard a marked C-20C.  In 2000, President Clinton flew to Pakistan aboard an unmarked Gulfstream III.  In 2003, President George W. Bush flew in the co-pilot seat of a Sea Control Squadron Thirty-Five (VS-35) S-3B Viking from Naval Air Station North Island, California to the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, with that latter obviously being an exception. Barack Obama used a Gulfstream C-37 variant on a personal trip in 2009.

Trump can use something else than a 747 for what he uses Air Force One for in almost every single instance.

Indeed, the entire topic brings up a lot of things about the risks of having an airplane like this, a luxury airliner inside, which is really a combat aircraft.  It makes it easy to forget what it really is, and it makes a President feel like an Emperor, which he is not.

So why am I doing it again?

Since May, 2025 Donald Trump has used the existing Air Force One to fly back and forth to his Florida golf home/resort, effectively using the airplane as a toy, repeatedly.  He's also used it for what are basically campaign trips.  He's launched an illegal war against Iran for which the Department of Defense now seeks $80,000,000,000 to cover, and which killed thirteen Americans and untold numbers of Iranians.  That war encouraged Israel to not only participate in it, or perhaps the other way around, but also to engage in an invasion of Lebanon.  He's spent something like $13,000,000 to Rhino Line the Washington D. C. reflecting pool, he's trying to build a massive ballroom that will ultimately cost the taxpayer one way or another, and he's trying to build a triumphal arch, making the United States the first country in the world to build an arch after getting solidly defeated in a war.

He's demented, and he acts like an emperor. This airplane is part of that delusion.

Truth be known, the entire Air Force One thing hasn't made sense for years.  Having some sort of aircraft available for Presidential use for Presidential work makes some limited sense. But most of what Trump uses the aircraft for could be achieved through commercial aviation.  Indeed, not one single trip Trump has taken could not have been accomplished that way.

And that's how this should be done.  Back when transpiration was by rail, the President didn't own a train.  When Trump goes over to the G7 to insult the Italian Prime Minister with his lunacy, that could be done by commercial air, and should be done that way.  And I mean commercial air, not chartered air.  The government could get him a ticket on a regularly scheduled flight.

And when he goes to Mar A Lago he can pay for his own ticket.

I know that the objections will be "oh my, it isn't safe".  That is, frankly, for the most part complete BS.  Trump could get a ticket on Ryan Air and be just as safe as anyone else. 

And if its a little less safe, that's a good thing.  One of the problems with the modern presidency is that the occupant of the White House is too insulated from the people he supposedly serves.  At one time the President shook the hands of all who lined up on New Years Day.  Not anymore.

If the President had to travel with the great unwashed masses maybe he'd be less of a lunatic.  Or maybe he'd just realize that its a real job.  

Anyway you look at it, Air Force One is a titanic waste of money.  The Air Force has aircraft.  If he needs to go, he can load up on a C5A with the equipment going wherever its going.  

And this waste of money is going to a Trump library just before Trump leaves office.

WTF?

If the US had to spend money on it, it should keep it.  This is appalling.  That should be addressed as soon as possible.  If there's a current way to address it, it just should be silently done.  Trump can leave office and his library, which frankly is a pointless thing in the first place, can buy a Revell model kit of a Boeing 747. This absurd flying castle can carry on in its existing role and join the two that are being built, or preferably at least one of those two contracts cancelled seeing as the US has this thing.

At that point, the signature on the under panel that Trump affixed yesterday can be fittingly modified, recalling World War Two nose art.  A realistic Trump nude torso doodle, a la Epstein, can be installed.  A fitting monument.

It's a gift form Qatar, an authoritarian, semi-constitutional hereditary emirate monarchy ruled by the House of Thani.  The Emir is the absolute authority.

Just the sort of government that King Donald can related to.  Apparently they could relate to him, or more likely, thought they could obtain some advantage by appealing to his pathetic vanity.

The plane will be transferred to his Presidential library before he leaves office.  What books would even appear in Donald Trump's library boggles the imagination.  He does not appear to be a well read man, or even really read anything.  Figures from his last administration related he had a hard time reading memos they gave him as he lost interest so rapidly.  He does not appear to be a smart man.²

And, current American worship of wealth aside, we shouldn't expect him to be.  What I've long suspected turns out to be true.  The wealthy are often stupid.

Does Being Rich Make You Stupid?

False consciousness goes upscale.

Billionaires Are Actually Less Intelligent Than Lower-Paid People New Study Shows

Does Having Too Much Money Make Us Stupid?

World’s Richest People May Actually Be Dumber Than Those Who Earn Less, Study Says

Luck and circumstance has plenty to do with it.

This actually doesn't surprise me at all.  The question is whether wealth makes you stupid, or encourages the breeding down of intelligence.  Either can be maintained.

It was Chesterton who noted that "AMONG the Very Rich you will never find a really generous man, even by accident. They may give their money away, but they will never give themselves away; they are egoistic, secretive, dry as old bones. To be smart enough to get all that money you must be dull enough to want it."  There's something to that.  But beyond that, there's plenty of evolutionary evidence of the latter point.  Wild cattle are quite a bit smarter than domestic ones.  Wolves are smarter than dogs.  Wild turkeys are very smart birds whereas domestic ones, apparently are dumb as a post.

Cave drawing of an Aurochs.  Modern cows can be dicey, but aurochs wanted to kill you.

The question would be, of course, why this is true, and selective breeding by human beings largely explains it.  We'd rather not have a mean cow that seeks to break free, raising a gang of mean cows, and lay siege to the village.  Hunters and herdsmen like smart dogs, but bred to be fairly compliant. If you've ever owned a standard poodle, one of the oldest hunting breeds, you'll see how much of the wolf wasn't bread out of them, they think for themselves, we've worked a lot on dogs since then.  

French Poodle in the early 1900s. The coat may look weird but they're a hunting dog, and a German bred one.  Even now, the Puddle Dog has opinions on everything and isn't shy about giving you them. The only other modern hunting dog that rivals them that way is the Chesapeake Bay Retriever, another old breed..

It's a dangerous thing to say, and contrary to the thesis advanced by eugenicists, but there's pretty good evidence that people on average were getting smarter and smarter all along throughout human history, in very real terms, up until just recently.  Evolution was forcing it.  Some evolutionary biologist argue that the homo sapien sapien of our current era is demonstrably smarter than homo sapiens of, say, 100,000 years ago. . . or 50,000 years ago. . . or 10,000 years ago, or 5,000.³   And it makes some sense.

In a normal, i.e., not rich, environment a lot of things go into mate selection, oh heck let's say spouse selection other than what goes into attracting people, oh heck let's say men, to Only Fans.  Love has always been an aspect of it, but its interesting to note how even when I was a teen, teenagers selected dates on character, which included intelligence, more than anything else.  It's funny to think of now, but if a guy had a "pretty" girlfriend, he was just considered lucky, and a girl with brains and other positive characteristics would have a boyfriend who featured the same, irrespective of her looks. When the girl was good looking, it was just sort of like winning a bonus prize.  Purely good looking girls, if that's all they had going for them, weren't really sought out.  

  Two young couples.  Migrant farm workers in Louisiana and their children, 1939.

This remained true, I'd note, throughout my entire single life.  Maybe it's largely true now.

But with the wealthy, it's another matter.

Future Playboy model Anna Nicole Smith and her first husband, Billy Ray Smith.  She was 17  and he was 16 when she married.  He was cook.  She changed her image enormously after they divorced and ended up married to an octogenarian after being a Playboy Centerfold and Guess Jeans model. Do we think that late union was a marriage for love on either side?  She paid the price, of course, dying young.  Her first husband is still alive, but never speaks much.  He was apparently crushed by the death of their son, pictured here, when he was in his twenties.  He never remarried.

Donald Trump, who gives no evidence of being an intelligent man, has been married three times, with each spouse having a certain sort of look save for one.  Two have been Slavic beauties of a certain sort, which means they present a certain look that certain people regard as glamorous beauty.⁴. The second, Marla Maples, actually presents as pretty smart. That marriage lasted six years.⁵

The point here?

I'm not thinking that a lot of the super rich determine their mates the way regular people do.  I don't think "is he/she a good helpmate?" or "do we have the same interests, faiths, worldview?", or to be really old school, "can this guy/gal help me around the farm?" has gone into it much.  Rather, they often seem to be chosen on looser characteristics that might more resemble how oriental potentates chose concubines for the harem, i.e., looks.

When Arab raiders stole Irish women, after all, smart as those women tend to be, they weren't marketing them on "look at this ginger. . . she's really got the brains!"

Now, a person can take this too far, but we live in a rich society.  The richest of us may in fact be stupider than the rest of us, or a lot of us.  And we collectively, just like a placid cow in the field, may be starting to get dumber overall.

We live in a materially very wealthy culture.  Even the average impoverished American is wealthier than many thought to be well off in former eras. And to add to that, the decay in morality, brought about by material wealth, which has allowed us to focus only on ourselves, has developed a self centered sexual culture that contributes to this.

Put another way, as one female observer seriously noted:

But its not making people happier.  People know something is wrong.

Gallup informs us that most Americans believe in the "American Dream", whatever that is, but that a very high percentage believe its unobtainable.

American Dream Endures as U.S. Approaches 250 Years

That's because it is unobtainable.

The American Dream has been defined in various ways.  I think it might be best defined in the film The Best Years Of Our Lives.

In that film there's a moment when discharged sergeant Fred Derry gives a loan to a discharged Navy vet who is a tenant farmer.  He wants to buy his own farm.  He knows he can do it.

That's the best description of the American Dream I've ever seen.

The real dream is to own your own.  And at the time of the American Revolution, most did. That's what had brought them to the country.

I don't know what they teach the young now, but when I was growing up it was a lot of crap about how people came over for freedom, mostly freedom of religion.

Yeah, some did, sort of. The best example might be the Puritans on the Mayflower, who were seeking freedom to worship in their own way and to tell everyone else in the world how they were supposed to do it.  If you were in a Puritan community you were worshipping with them or getting punished, severely.

Only about 1/3d of the Mayflower passengers were Puritans.  The rest were likely members of the Church of England which itself was less than 100 years separated from the Catholic Church, and even less separated from the Prayer Book Rebellion.⁶ Point is, those passengers, who were all part of the group that put in as they were out of beer, didn't come for religious freedom.

They came for land.

Land is, and was, independent.  People knew then, and they knew now, that land was independence, freedom, and a decent life worth living.  If you could obtain, as Chesterton would later put it, "three acres and a cow", or more likely 40, and a mule, you had it made.  You were not rich.  You were not poor. You were your own family.

Land is what caused Englishmen to risk their lives in 1607 to come to a new continent, or Frenchmen to come to it in 1608, or Spanish to come to it in 1565.  Here they could get it, at some cost, but a none the less obtainable one.  In Europe, they could not.  And if not all came as farmers, tradesmen who came, came because they could open their own shops, essentially operating on the same ideal.  Those who couldn't muster up the cash for transit indentured themselves to do so which, in spite of latter day white apologist, was not slavery.  It was a temporary means of getting started, in some ways like apprenticeships or joining the service operates for many today.

We cannot say that it was universally benign. That would be a lie. The land in fact already belonged to somebody else, the native inhabitants, whose claims were excused due to their rotational agricultural practices and low population density. But that doesn't change the basic fact.  It was land, not "freedom" of any type that drew the immigrant.

By moving, they freed themselves from some landowning overlord and made themselves independent farmers.  That dream lasted all the way up until the mid 20th Century in some fashion.  While it remains alive today, the truth is that the reality it of it is as dead, yielded to the bloated interests of the rich.  The largest landowner in the US today is billionaire sports and real estate mogul Stan Kroenke, who owns land in Wyoming.  Mom and pop shops have yielded to the nightmare created by Sam Walton.  

People who think the American dream is alive are largely fooling themselves.

Nonetheless, a dream is a dream, and revolutions are based on dreams.

The American Revolution was based on a landowning dream.  It wasn't, frankly necessarily wholly admirable.  The Intolerable Acts included, in a very real sense, the sense that the Crown was going to restrict the right of expanding countrymen's families to settle new lands, and they were right. The fear also was that the Crown would restrict economic activity in the Colonies for revenue purposes, and that was partially correct.  Common Sense and the like aside, a real cause of the Revolution was the native sense that the free right to settle land, and engage in small free enterprise, was the only thing that separated American Colonist form the English and European masses.

They were right, if not necessarily morally right.

A large number, maybe most, revolutions since that time, and some before it, have been based on the same cause. The French Revolution was not, and it remains a global oddball.  The Russian Revolution, failed as it was, is such an example, however, as was the Russian Revolution of 1905.  The Chinese Revolution of 1911, and the Chinese Civil War, both failed examples, also were.  The Mexican Revolution, also a failed revolution, very much was.

The Mexican Revolution provides, in fact, an excellent example.  Through every phase, from 1911 onwards, the rich landed class fought back, and when defeat arrived, they stepped aside and regrouped.  It kept the Revolution from really being successful.  Indeed, of all the revolutions we have noted, only the American Revolution was really successful.

But the success it created is dead.  Today,. we have the Donald Trumps and Elon Musks and other 1%ers that control the economy, and which some like Jonah Goldberg even feel we should celebrate (as to Musk).

Well, no.

Time for a second American revolution.

Not, we might note, one with guns.  Indeed, that would inevitably be not only immoral, but outright moronic, lead by people festooned with Second Amendment tattoos while advocating outright fascism.

No, something more radical than that, a revolution at the ballot box.

It's time to end the moronic celebration of a "free market system" that isn't free in any sense.  Corporate Capitalist are shoving pablum down the throats of the electorate while pocking the largess. Large sale corporatism needs to end.

And so too does a weird millennialism appropriations of public lands by people like Deseret Mike Lee and pathetic fellow travellers like John Barrasso and Harriet Hageman.

A revolution can be had at the ballot box.  It won't happen all at once, but if started now the two party system can be ended, and the creation of wealth for the wealthy can be as well.  Remote land ownership, something the colonist came here to escape, can be as well.

It won't happen as long as people don't think.  But they need to think now.  At some point they will, and if we don't take on the yoke of this burden now, when the plow ox bulks, it'll be bad.

Footnotes

1.  Donald Trump is such a WASP, with the adherence to the "P", that he's converted some property in Washington D.C. to become a golf course and is putting in courses on some military bases.

Put in shooting ranges or something.  Not something that fat old white guys play.

2. The fact that Trump is a Wharton graduate is really a slam at the Ivy League. Yes, they have some great schools, but the system they operate in really has graduated some failures.  Pete Hegseth provides such an example.  

Wharton owes the country an apology, and I say that as somebody who has a relative that graduated from there. The fact that Trump graduated is applying. The fact that Chuck Gray is their product is as well.

3.  Some theologians have speculated that there was a point with our species when God converted us from just a smart hominid into what we are in the Divine Plan, with an immortal soul. The speculation is that it was the moment language arrived, and there's some archeological and biological evidence that moment was in fact sudden and radical.  

4. Frankly, Trump spouses 1 and 3 really aren't bombshells.  Melania is more properly characterized as "handsome".

5.  We can't really speculate on the smarts of 1 and particularly 3.  Melania is hard to figure as she's never obtained a really good command of English.  None the less, people who admire her, are frankly doing so willfully.

6. Recusant Catholics are estimated to be less than 5% of the English population at the time, which means that were likely to probably have actually been 10 to 15%.  Today, more Catholics attend weekly services in the UK than the established church.  Recently one Anglican convert in the UK described her transition as "going Full Fat Catholicism"

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Serving as a reminder that Capital doesn't care that much about you.

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The T...: Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist... : 146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workf...

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire. Serving as a reminder that Capital doesn't care that much about you.

Lex Anteinternet: Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist...: 146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workforce of 500, died in Manhattan's horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory ...

Posted as a reminder that management and capital often really doesn't care that much what happens to labor and regular people.

In 1911, it was textile workers.  In 2026, it's everybody.  You may care, for example, about big oil and big ag, but it doesn't care about you.  It doesn't care that much about you if you are working for it, and you can't be assured that it cares if your children inherit a planet with the surface temperature of the sun.

Oh, sure, there are some that might, on occasion.  But don't fool yourself that Elon Musk, Donald Trump, or Jeff Bezos, and their pals, are pulling for you.

Saturday, March 25, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factor Fire.

146 garment workers—123 women and girls and 23 men, out of a workforce of 500, died in Manhattan's horrific Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.  Most of the victims were Italian or Jews immigrants 14 to 23 years old.  62 of the victims jumped to their deaths.

The fabric fire in the fireproof building broke out five minutes before end of shift. The doors to the stairwells and exits were locked to prevent unauthorized breaks and to reduce theft

Oh, but don't worry. . . today's oligarchs have your vest interest at heart. . . 

Last edition:

Monday, March 20, 1911. Stolypin resigns, and then is back.

Labels: 1910s, 1911, Czar Nicholas II, Pyotr Stolypin, Russia

Lex Anteinternet: Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, Trump now wants materials released, and the ultimate corruption of money.

Lex Anteinternet: Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, T...: 

Epstein survivors issue urgent plea to Congress, Trump now wants materials released, and the ultimate corruption of money.

Hmmm. . . that's interesting.  Trump's now okay with it.

Trump and his acolytes went from demanding their release, to absolutely opposing it.  Now they're in favor of it again.

What gives?

Well one thing may simply be that so much time has gone by, these files are now scrubbed.  Sounds conspiratorial, I know, but files can be scrubbed, or lost.

The problem here is that the whole thing sounds so, well, all over the place that an effective scrubbing might be impossible.

Another one is that Trump might already know it won't get past the Senate.  Just yesterday loyal flunky John Barrasso stated he wasn't sure if they'd vote on it or not.  Figures like Barrasso figure their Senate seats are so safe that they're untouchable.  They aren't, and he was running pretty scared last time, but they tend to think that way.

Or it just isn't worth the political capital that it was burning up.  That would suggest that whoever is getting protected just isn't worth this level of damage, particularly that some formerly loyal MAGA's have gone overboard into the lifeboats.  The Republicans only barely control the House now and are set to lose them in the midterms.  If only two or three more Republicans in the House abandoned ship, Mike Smarmy Johnson is done for and the GOP would start to break free of King Donny.  Two Republican House members, including amazingly Marjorie Taylor Greene, are openly poking the king and he's been able to do nothing about it.

Yet another is that, related to above, Trump just intends to lie his way out of whatever they say, if they're damaging to him, and so far we have no reason to believe that in spite of his personally gross behavior towards women, that he's implicated in kiddy diddling.  At the worst, it's possible that he knew what was going on and didn't do anything about it,  and there's likely a lot of rich and powerful people in that boat.  Or maybe he actually didn't.  Epstein was a creep, but just having young bikini wearing women on the premises doesn't necessarily mean that diddling is going on.  So whatever is in there, he may be confident won't touch him directly, and whomever it does, well he can always say it includes Democrats too, which it probably does.

Which may be, after all is said and done, the biggest lesson.  Since Ronald Reagan this country has followed the absurd notion that's what's good for the wealthy is good for everyone.  As Oliver Bullough has stated; "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly".   

Businessmen plotted to take over the government and install fascism in the 1930s.  The plot failed, and nobody was prosecuted.  Reagan sold the American public the idea that vast wealth trickles down.

Epstein hung out with the rich and powerful. Some of them he supplied with teenage girls.  The money didn't trickle down, and its not trickling down.  Rather, it's morally corrosive and effectively the Business Plot ultimately won out with the election of Donald Trump, aided by the Democrats prime strategy being a judicial coup rather than an oligarchic one.  

There's still time to reverse that. This might be a good place to start.

Lex Anteinternet: Yeoman's Laws of Behavior

Lex Anteinternet: Yeoman's Laws of Behavior: 

Yeoman's Twenty-third Law of Behavior:  "All money corrupts, and big money corrupts bigly" Oliver Bullough.

Certain societies worship wealth, but this rule is invariably true, although there are plenty of individual exceptions.  

Wealth corrupts, it simply does.  The New Testament councils that "Love of money is the root of all evil", and while some people acquire vast wealth simply because they love work, quite often it's mixed in with the love of money.  Beyond that, money at some point both blinds people to the consequences of their own actions, and to the realities of that.

The corruption of money keeps people working in positions they should yield to younger people who are kept from moving up, and therefore kept at a fiscal and societal disadvantage.  It leads to the destruction of land, people, and the environment.  And big money nearly invariably brings in extra corruption on a personal level.

Big money attracts sycophants who assure the wealthy person that his actions are benign, or that he's smart, and deserves to be the exception to the rule.  It reduces people to objects, and allows people to believe that their personal destruction of others is merited.  

“No one can serve two masters.m He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon."  Matthew, Chapter 6.

The Agrarian's Lament: Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Distributist remake of this country.

The Agrarian's Lament: Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Dis...: 

Now, more than ever, it's time for an Agrarian/Distributist remake of this country.

I was going to use the work "revolution", but didn't as I don't want it suggested that I mean an armed revolution.  I'm not.  Indeed, I'm not keen on violence in general, and as I intend to refer to the American Revolution in this essay, I'll note that had I lived in the 1770s, I'd have been genuinely horrified by events.  I highly doubt that I would have joined the "Patriots" and likewise I wouldn't have joined the Loyalist either.  I'd have been in the 1/3d that sat the war out with out choosing sides, but distressed by the overall nature of it.

The other day I posted this:

The Agrarian's Lament: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 10...: Lex Anteinternet: CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The... :  CliffsNotes of the Zeitgeist, 108th Edition. “The brave men and w...

In that item, I noted this:

Interestingly, just yesterday I heard a Catholic Answers interview of Dr. Andrew Willard Jones on his book The Church Against the State.  The interview had a fascinating discussion on sovereignty and subsidiarity, and included a discussion on systems of organizing society, including oligarchy.

Oligarchy is now where we are at.

I've been thinking about it, and Dr. Jones has really hit on something.  The nature of Americanism, if you will, is in fact not its documentary artifacts and (damaged) institutions, it is, rather, in what it was.  At the time of the American Revolution the country had an agrarian/distributist culture and that explained, and explains, everything about it.

The Revolution itself was fought against a society that had concentrated oligarchical wealth.  To more than a little degree, colonist to British North America had emigrated to escape that.

We've been losing that for some time.  Well over a century, in fact, and indeed dating back into the 19th Century.  It started accelerating in the mid 20th Century and now, even though most do not realize it, we are a full blown oligarchy.

Speaking generally, we may say that whatever legal enactments are held to be for the interest of various constitutions, all these preserve them. And the great preserving principle is the one which has been repeatedly mentioned- to have a care that the loyal citizen should be stronger than the disloyal. Neither should we forget the mean, which at the present day is lost sight of in perverted forms of government; for many practices which appear to be democratical are the ruin of democracies, and many which appear to be oligarchical are the ruin of oligarchies. Those who think that all virtue is to be found in their own party principles push matters to extremes; they do not consider that disproportion destroys a state. A nose which varies from the ideal of straightness to a hook or snub may still be of good shape and agreeable to the eye; but if the excess be very great, all symmetry is lost, and the nose at last ceases to be a nose at all on account of some excess in one direction or defect in the other; and this is true of every other part of the human body. The same law of proportion equally holds in states. Oligarchy or democracy, although a departure from the most perfect form, may yet be a good enough government, but if any one attempts to push the principles of either to an extreme, he will begin by spoiling the government and end by having none at all. Wherefore the legislator and the statesman ought to know what democratical measures save and what destroy a democracy, and what oligarchical measures save or destroy an oligarchy. For neither the one nor the other can exist or continue to exist unless both rich and poor are included in it. If equality of property is introduced, the state must of necessity take another form; for when by laws carried to excess one or other element in the state is ruined, the constitution is ruined.

Aristotle, Politics.

Corporations were largely illegal in early American history.  They existed, but were highly restricted.  The opposite is the case now, with corporations' "personhood" being so protected by the law that the United States Supreme Court has ruled that corporate political spending is a form of free speech and corporations can spend unlimited money on independent political broadcasts in candidate elections.  This has created a situation in which corporations have gobbled up local retail in the US and converted middle class shopkeeping families into serfs.  It's also made individual heads of corporations obscenely, and I used that word decidedly, wealthy.

Wealth on the level demonstrated by Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Donald Trump simply should not exist.  It's bad for average people and its corrupting of their souls. That corruption can be seen in their unhinged desire for self aggrandizement and acquisition.  Elon Must acquires young white women of a certain type for concubinage  Donald Trump, whose money is rooted in the occupation of land, has collected bedmates over the years, "marrying" some of them and in his declining mental state, seeks to demonstrated his value through grotesque molestation of public property.

Those are individual examples of course, but the government we currently have, while supported by the Puritan class, disturbingly features men of vast wealth, getting wealthier, with a government that operates to fork over more money to those who already have it.  The MAGA masses, which stand to grow poorer, and in the case of the agricultural sector are very much already suffering that fate, deservedly after supporting Trump, continue to believe that the demented fool knows what he's doing.

I don't know the source of this, but this illustration perfectly depicts how MAGA populists treat Donald Trump.

This system is rotten to the core and it needs to be broken.  Broken down, broken up, and ended.

The hopes of either the Democrats or the Republicans waking up and addressing it seem slim. The GOP is so besotted with it's wealthy leaders that the Speaker of the House, who claims to be a devout Christian, is attempting to keep the release of the names of wealthy hebephiles secret.  Only wealth and power can explain that.  The Democrats, which since 1912 have claimed to be the part of the working man, flounder when trying to handle the economic plight of the middle class.  Both parties agree on only one thing, that being you must never consider a third party.  

It is really time for a third part in this country.

In reality, of course, there are some, but only one is worth considering in any fashion, that being the American Solidarity Party.  Perhaps it could pick up the gauntlet here and smack it across the face of the oligarchy.  Or perhaps local parties might do it.  In my state, I think that if enough conservative Republicans (real conservatives, not the Cassie Cravens, John Bear, Dave Simpson, Bob Ide, Chuck Gray servants of the Orange Golden Calf Republicans) it could be done locally.  The U.S. has a history, although its barely acknowledged, of local parties, including ones whose members often successfully run on the tick of two parties.  New York's Zohran Mamdani and David Dinkins, for example were both Democrats and members of the Democratic Socialist Party.  Democrats from Minnesota are actually members of the Democratic Farm Labor Party, which is an amalgamation of two parties.  There's no reason a Wyoming Party couldn't form and field its own candidates, some of whom could also run as Republicans.

Such a party, nationally or locally, needs to be bold and take on the oligarchy. There's no time to waste on this, as the oligarchy gets stronger every day.  And such candidates will meet howls of derision.  Locally Californian Chuck Gray, who ironically has looked like the Green Peace Secretary of State on some issues, will howl about how they're all Communist Monarchist Islamic Stamp Collectors.  And some will reason to howl, such as the wealthy landlord in the state's legislature.

The reason for that is simple.  Such a party would need to apply, and apply intelligently, the principals of subsidiarity, solidarity and the land ethic. It would further need to be scientific, agrarianistic, and distributist. 

The first thing, nationally or locally, that such a party should do is bad the corporate ownership of retail outlets.  Ban it.  That would immediately shift retail back to the middle class, but also to the family unit.  A family might be able to own two grocery or appliance stores, for example, but probably not more than that.

The remote and corporate ownership of rural land needs to come to an immediate end as well.  No absentee landlords.  People owning agricultural land should be only those people making a living from it.

That model, in fact, should apply overall to the ownership of land.  Renting land out, for any reason, ought to be severely restricted.  The maintenance of a land renting system, including residential rent, creates landlords, who too often turn into Lords.

On land, the land ethic ought to be applied on a legal and regulatory basis. The American concept of absolute ownership of land is a fraud on human dignity.  Ownership of land is just, but not the absolute ownership.  You can't do anything you want on your property, nor should you be able to, including the entry by those engaged in natural activities, such as hunting, fishing, or simply hiking, simply because you are an agriculturalist.

While it might be counterintuitive in regard to subsidiarity, it's really the case, in this context, that the mineral resources underneath the surface of the Earth should belong to the public at large, either at the state, or national, level.  People make no contribution whatsoever to the mineral wealth being there. They plant nothing and they do not stock the land, like farmers do with livestock.  It's presence or absence is simply by happenstance and allowing some to become wealthy and some in the same category not simply by luck is not fair.  It 

Manufacturing and distribution, which has been address, is trickier, but at the end of the day, a certain amount of employee ownership of corporations in this category largely solves the problem.  People working for Big Industry ought to own a slice of it.

And at some level, a system which allows for the accumulation of obscene destructive levels of wealth is wrong.  Much of what we've addressed would solve this.  You won't be getting rich in retail if you can only have a few stores, for example.  And you won't be a rich landlord from rent if most things just can't be rented.  But the presence of the massively wealthy, particularly in an electronic age, continues to be vexing.  Some of this can be addressed by taxation. The USCCB has stated  that "the tax system should be continually evaluated in terms of its impact on the poor.” and it should be.  The wealthy should pay a much more progressive tax rate.

These are, of course, all economic, or rather politico-economic matters. None of this addresses the great or stalking horse social issues of the day.  We'll address those, as we often have, elsewhere.  But the fact of the matter is, right now, the rich and powerful use these issues to distract.  Smirky Mike Johnson may claim to be a devout Christian, but he's prevented the release of names of men who raped teenage girls.  Donald Trump may publicly state that he's worried about going to Hell, but he remains a rich serial polygamist.  J.D. Vance may claim to be a devout Catholic, but he spends a lot of time lying through his teeth.

And, frankly, fix the economic issues, and a lot of these issues fix themselves.

Lex Anteinternet: Hoarding bananas.

Lex Anteinternet: Hoarding bananas.: 

Hoarding bananas.

This isn't really correct.

Frankly, the other monkeys would take the hoarded bananas, and if the hoarding monkey resisted it, they'd probably beat the crap out of him.

I am, I'd note, not advocating that, but what I will note is that there's something deeply wrong with this behavior not being addressed.

And it can be, through taxes. What ever it is that compels people like Must to engage in what is essentially hording of resource, money, and in his case women, will continue to operate on him if he's heavily taxed.

And if allowed to go unaddressed, at some point, one we've passed, he become a burden on everyone.

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

Lex Anteinternet: Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 67th Edition. So you...: 

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

Наро́дная во́ля?

The Pitchforks Are Coming… For Us Plutocrats

By NICK HANAUER

 

July/August 2014

Hanauer is a very wealth man.

Hanauer concluded his article with:

My family, the Hanauers, started in Germany selling feathers and pillows. They got chased out of Germany by Hitler and ended up in Seattle owning another pillow company. Three

 

generations later, I benefited from that. Then I got as lucky as a person could possibly get in the Internet age by having a buddy in Seattle named Bezos. I look at the average Joe on the street, and I say, “There but for the grace of Jeff go I.” Even the best of us, in the worst of circumstances, are barefoot, standing by a dirt road, selling fruit. We should never forget that, or forget that the United States of America and its middle class made us, rather than the other way around.

Or we could sit back, do nothing, enjoy our yachts. And wait for the pitchforks.

I suspect we're past that point now.  We've elected a plutocrat who promised to be sort of what Franklin Roosevelt actually was, "a traitor to his class".

He won't be. 

I suspect the rage will amplify.

So, what am I talking about?

I've never had any problems with my health insurance.  People complain about their health insurance a lot, however.

I'm noting that here as the public reaction to the assassination of Brian Thompson, CEO of United Healthcare, has been shocking.  I've seen people I know and respect actually rejoice at his killing, and that reaction has been extremely widespread.  I even saw somebody who is associated sort of with the insurance industry rejoice at the murder.  Moreover, one of the most right wing people I know, who voted for Trump twice, made a positive comment about the killing.

Let that sink in.  Far right, voted for Trump twice, and expressing some sympathy with the killer.

We find ourselves, at the same time that populists elected a childish billionaire who started nominating his billionaire buddies to government positions, in a situation in which a large section of the American population, including no doubt many of the people who voted the overaged rich child into office, pretty much cheering a terroristic assassination of a health insurance company CEO.

That it was an assassination, there can be no doubt. Expended shell casings were labeled "delay", "defend" and "depose", showing both a familiarity with civil litigation and the book Delay Deny Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don't Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.

What's that tell us?

Well it tells us in part that the social fabric in this country is a lot more ripped than we even began to imagine.  

And it also tells us people attempting to read the populist weather vein might be reading it wrong.  The rage might not be as fully right wing as imagined, as now we have Americans cheering the killing of an industry figure, something that Trump/Musk and his cronies love.  That's its populist, however, there can be no doubt.

I can't recall things like this happening in the US, the targeted assassination of industry figures, since the 1920s, when it was a feature of real radicalism.  We're entering a very bad space.

Aftermath of the Wall Street Bombing of 1920.

It suggest, however, that in spite of what Trump/Musk imagine, the country might actually be ready for some real economic reform as it received in the 1930s.  Assassination is not tolerable, but it would appear some aspects of corporate capitalism may not be so much any longer either.

Indeed, the same right wing fellow I mentioned above proposed that all health insurance companies should be forced to be 100% policy holder owned, a highly distributist suggestion.

It is, I'd note, worth noting that plenty of current Trump backers from the far right are noting that the killer, Luigi Mangione, is from a well to do family.  He is. This is supposed to tell us that this was a deluded left winger.

Deluded, no doubt.  Left winter, maybe.  But it's also worth noting that before Trump was the populist darling, Bernie Sanders was.  Tulsi Gabbard, one time Democrat and now Trump nominee for security chief, was a Sanders supporter before she supported Trump.

Joseph Goebbels was a Communist before he was a Nazi.

Goebbels in 1916.

Lenin was from a middle class family, whose parents were monarchists.  He was a lawyer, hardly a proletarian occupation.

The point of this?  Well, just because Mangione was from a well to do family, who no doubt supported none of this, doesn't mean that he became a populist assassin as he was radicalized by the left.  He personally may have been.  We don't know.  He may be just a nut.

But the widespread cheering for him, and it is widespread, shows that Hanauer may very well be very right.

Last edition:

Cliffnotes of the Zeitgeist, 66th Edition. A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer up your pants.*

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