Lex Anteinternet: Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the "signs and wonders" and completely missing what's gong on.

Lex Anteinternet: Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the...: 

Rich Men North of Richmond, Part I. Resisting the "signs and wonders" and completely missing what's gong on.

Rich Men North of Richmond, which is independently produced, I think, had made a big Internet and music scene splash, and frankly, not because it's good.

It is, as of this writing, on Billboard's Hot 100.

The ballad is played by Oliver Anthony, a genuine blue collar Virginian, apparently.  All of his music videos seem to be filmed in a heavily wooded lot, which also appears to be genuine, although the rural South provides a certain cache in country music to such an extent that a Canadian band has even affected it, calling itself The Dead South.  All of Anthony's music is played on a Resonator Guitar, a type of guitar I normally call a Dobro.  I associate resonated guitars with the blues, not with country music, so this is a bit odd in and of itself.

How I imagine a guitar with a resonator properly being used.

Fans have gushed on the "return" of "real" or "authentic" country music, and this may indeed be the first genuine example of authentic country music to become a big hit in decades.  Even 1st Lt. Austin von Letkemann, the author (host? mc?) of the wickedly funny Army satire series Mandatory Fun Day mentioned it the other day, as a real fan, citing Colter Wall at the same time.  Wall is authentic, that's for sure, but in a different genre, genuine Western, i.e., cowboy, music.

But I don't think it's the music that boosted Anthony's song to the top of the C&W charts.  It's the content.  Consider the lyrics:

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

Rich Man North of Richmond, it might be noted, comes hard on the heels of In A Small Town, by Jason Aldean.  

Consider its lyrics:

Sucker punch somebody on a sidewalk

Carjack an old lady at a red light

Pull a gun on the owner of a liquor store

Ya think it's cool, well, act a fool if ya like

Cuss out a cop, spit in his face

Stomp on the flag and light it up

Yeah, ya think you're tough

Well, try that in a small town

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Got a gun that my granddad gave me

They say one day they're gonna round up

Well, that shit might fly in the city, good luck

Try that in a small town 

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Full of good ol' boys, raised up right

If you're looking for a fight

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

See how far ya make it down the road

Around here, we take care of our own

You cross that line, it won't take long

For you to find out, I recommend you don't

Try that in a small town

Try that in a small town

Ooh-ooh

Try that in a small town

Aldean, I'd note, isn't from a small town.  He's' from Macon, Georgia, population 150,000 or so, so it's a mid-sized city.  And In A Small Town isn't real country, but rather country and enjoyed the same popularity.

Both of these songs immediately became populist anthems.  So much so that none other than liberal economist Robert Reich, whom this blog has an obvious love/hate relationship, just posted on the song, with frankly a typically disappointing analysis.

Rich Men North of Richmond

Republicans court cultural populism, while Democrats eschew economic populism. But economic populism is the key.

Reich offers his view, but he's wrong on what's going on here, at least in part, and certainly wrong on the fix.  Like other left wing economists in the United States, Reich is a corporate capitalist, which is also what all the right wing economists are. Reich correctly believes that the system has gone wonky to the detriment of the working class (whatever the current working class may be), but he fails to grasp, as nearly every economist in the United States and perhaps the Western World, or maybe even the planet, that the economy is supposed to serve average lives and average lives come first.  I.e., it's 1) my life and;  2) I need to work.  Not I'm a worker in a glorious worker's state and work will exalt me, or I'm a consumer in a glorious consumption state and consumption will exalt me, which are effectively the flip side of corporate capitalism.

So what's going on here?

Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't.  Neither right nor left economists get it.  For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.

Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all.  Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).

Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics.  Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist.  He can't be considered one, however.  He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.

1.  39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏

2.  As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony

3.  I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it. 

Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it

4.  As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛  the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥

5.  And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.

And there are a lot more.

Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

 Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:

1.  He has "an old soul".

2.  The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.

3.  He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.

4.  He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).

Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .

There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy.  Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now.  One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.

Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.

But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.

If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pudits claim, its definately not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.

The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion.  People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?

Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.

One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.

Well, the economy isn't serving people's lives, and that's because corporate capitalism doesn't.  Neither right nor left economists get it.  For that matter, left wing politicos, as exhibited by Reich's writings, particularly don't get it.

Reich is one of the people who keep interpreting this stuff from solely an economic prospective, while simultaneously, and increasingly from a bigoted prospective, issuing warnings about "Christian Nationalism", which actually isn't a movement this is part of at all.  Southern Cultural Christianity is, but that's completely different, and indeed largely leans on a different branch of Christianity (the same people who go to Trump rallies and find him to be a fine Christian probably think Constantine the Great ripped the faith away from the Baptists, or something).

Constantine the Great watching the burning of the books of Arian heretics.  Constantine would likely regard most MAGA Christians as appalling on religions grounds, while he'd recognize Christian Nationalist.  He can't be considered one, however.  He's regarded as a saint by the Easter Orthodox and the Ukrainian Catholic Church.

You can get a taste of what's actually up with these songs from the comments to Rich Men North of Richmond on Youtube.

1.  39 years old. Spent 12 1/2 years as a plumber until the small company I worked for went under as the pandemic began. Working for a big chain home store for the last 3 years getting beaten into the ground, treated like a disposable asset, and watching my earnings equal less and less as the prices of basic necessities goes up. Ive fought addiction and won. Ive found love and lost it. This song resonates on a level that I havent felt in a long time. Thank you and god bless. 🙏

2.  As a disabled Marine, struggling to even be in public, struggling with all the bullshit in this world, struggling with thoughts of suicide, struggling to find pride in my Country, struggling to find the strength to get up every day to do the same damn thing to barely make ends me… as an American STRUGGLING with LIFE… thank you for bringing a little hope to my small part of the world… thank you for letting me know I am not alone with my thoughts and feelings… THANK YOU and God bless you Oliver Anthony

3.  I’m a 42 year old ex addict living in a camper trailer pay cheque to pay cheque with my kids part time while working to help the homeless and addicted community. I won’t stop working like the rest of you because we know at some point that one day will come that we may get that one break that shows us it was all worth it. 

Amazing song Oliver, thank you for sharing it

4.  As a hard working black American man, this song is 🔥 📛  the first country song on my Playlist and I hope for more. In an Era where soul is gone from music THIS IS A BREATH OF MUCH NEEDED AIR. even put a tear in my eye 🔥

5.  And just like that you became the voice of 40 or 50 million working men. Amazing work, sir.

And there are a lot more.

Let's break down the lyrics again, emphasizing the ones that are telling.

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

So I can sit out here and waste my life away

Drag back home and drown my troubles away

It's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I wish politicians would look out for miners

And not just minors on an island somewhere

Lord, we got folks in the street, ain't got nothin' to eat

And the obese milkin' welfare

Well, God, if you're 5-foot-3 and you're 300 pounds

Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds

Young men are puttin' themselves six feet in the ground

'Cause all this damn country does is keep on kickin' them down

Lord, it's a damn shame what the world's gotten to

For people like me and people like you

Wish I could just wake up and it not be true

But it is, oh, it is

Livin' in the new world

With an old soul

These rich men north of Richmond

Lord knows they all just wanna have total control

Wanna know what you think, wanna know what you do

And they don't think you know, but I know that you do

'Cause your dollar ain't shit and it's taxed to no end

'Cause of rich men north of Richmond

I've been sellin' my soul, workin' all day

Overtime hours for bullshit pay

 Okay, some of that, like Mr. Reich notes, is economic, but a lot of it isn't. The protagonist notes:

1.  He has "an old soul".

2.  The rich men he complains about want total control, even over what he thinks.

3.  He complains about the Jeffrey Epstein saga, but more in an allegorical way than a specific way, suggesting that politicians are more concerned with their immoral pursuits than the lives of average working people.

4.  He takes a shot at the welfare poor, and unusually, notes fat ones (hardly anyone does that in contemporary America).

Hmmmm. . . Doesn't seem to be all economic. . .

There's a common liberal belief, and Reich is one of those espousing it, that if only the economy is good, everyone is happy.  Reich is one of those who goes on to point out, and correctly, that the economy really is good right now.  One who also does this nearly weekly is Donna Brazile, who is a Democratic political commentator I really like.

Nobody is saying the economy is perfect, of course, including Reich or Brazile.

But there's something they've noted, that they are missing.

If the economy is really good, and in actuality it is, and a large section of the middle class (and contrary to what pundits claim, it's definitely not all the "white male" middle class) are bitterly unhappy, what's going on.

The usual assertion is that the economy is doing well, but people just don't know it, which is a bit of a bizarre assertion.  People tend to know if they're doing well or not, which raises this question, with unemployment down, wages up, and inflation slowing, are people doing well?

Well, they might not actually be, and COVID may have made that plain to them.

One thing that's underlying the tone of the song is the economic shift in the nature of work since about 1970.

A meme version of the economics of the 1950s. . . dealing with more than economics.  This depiction of the 50s drives commentators nuts, who decry it as a myth, but there's more than a little truth to it, both in what it states, and in what it otherwise depicts.  

Americans tend to look back to the 1950s as some sort of golden age, and have a really mythologized view of the era.  Be that as it may, in the 50s, most men could in fact support a family on their income alone, and not just from white collar jobs but from blue collar jobs.  Not only could most men do it, but most men did do it.  As late as the 1970s, a lot of husbands actually objected to their wives working, whereas now most married women not only do work, but must work.  Perhaps an error in here, however, is that in the 50s that a lot of people were going to college.  In reality, in 1950 only 7.3% of men had a college degree and only 5.2% of women did, which by 1960 was 10.3% and 6% respectively.  This means, however, that a university degree was like gold.  Of interest, both of my mother's parents had university degrees, which is phenomenal given that they obtained them in the early 20th Century.  Neither of my father's parents did.  Also of note, my mother had a college degree, an AS, but she obtained in the 1970s and was not a high school graduate due to the Great Depression, where has my father had a DDS and his brother and one of his sisters attended university in the 1940s/1950s.

The 50s through the early 1970s really reflect post World War Two conditions, however, and might not be the best era to look at.  The 40s can't be looked at either, due to World War Two, nor can the 30s, due to the Great Depression.  You really have to get back to the 10s and 20s for economies to compare to, with some comparison from later decades.  Any way you look at it, however, a lot more families were supported from a single, usually male, income, but it was also the case that a lot more women always worked than is recognized.

Myths have power, however, and they also reflect aspects of reality as a rule.  Beowulf may not have slain a dragon in Sweden, but a warrior named Bear (Bee Wolf) probably was an early Scandinavia warrior vassal of note.  There really was a big battle at Troy, and it probably did start off as a totally juvenile spat over a girl that somebody regarded as a babe, although it's likely there was more to it than that.  Arthur wasn't a chivalric knight, but somebody the legend was based on, probably was a British Roman who did take on the invading Teutons in defense of Roman Britain heroically before going down on a battlefield.  There was indeed an era, not long ago, when a high school education could bring a person a living wage for not only the graduate, but a spouse and kids, and provide a middle income life.

And there was also a time during which, as harsh as the reality is, that you weren't in grocery store lines behind people who are paying for food with assistance, but who had money for tattoos, and who have suspended any regard for their personal appearance.

This is all obvious to people who are barely eeking by, but who know that their grandparents, with no more education than they have, did relatively well.

To add to it, although only subtly grasped, people are also aware, even as they participate in it, that the country's become a moral sewer.  The problem, in a way, is not that Jeffrey Epstein is uncommon, but rather than he is common in a way.  Only the rich, of course, used him as a procurer for teenage prostitutes, but the entertainment industry is essentially a society wide procurer for cinematic prostitution that has become increasingly debased.

All that does involve wealth, but part of the underlying tone, and one that people like Reich can't seem to grasp, is that the American political left insists that it all conduct be accepted and each person's choices, no matter how self-destructive, anti-natural, debased, or weird, be celebrated.  People very well know that the entire movement to support surgical gender mutilation of children is wrong, for example, as well as deeply weird, but the left demands it be celebrated, just as it insists that what nearly amount to homosexual sex manuals be placed in public schools with public funds.  It is not that the standard bearers of the right are moral people.  Trump is a serial polygamist.  It's rather that there's a difference in promoting immorality and demanding that it be accepted and distancing policy from it, even if you engage in immorality yourself.  Double standards abound, but what the unhappy class is looking at doesn't seem to be grasped.  

Indeed, as the left repeatedly fails to grasp in regards to the that unhappy class, is that the class itself may not really apply the standards it mourns all that deeply, in regard to at least some of them.  Critics from the left, like Robert Reich, keep branding the movement "Christian Nationalist", as do some critics from the right, such as Susan Stubson.  They're both in correct.  Christian Nationalist take the practice of Christianity really seriously.  Southern Cultural Christian Populist, however, have a world roughly framed out by the Southern Baptist Convention, the pre-1970 Episcopal and Methodist Church's, or the African Methodist Church loosely in mind, but as a framework, not as a fortress.  Put another way, Christian Nationalist look to the Apostolic age and know what that meant, and aren't really comfortable completely with people who sit around watching NASCAR on Sundays.  Southern Cultural Christians are perfectly comfortable with watching NASCAR on Sundays and attend church for weddings, funerals, Easter and Christmas. They aren't the same thing.

But what both are uncomfortable with, but in different ways, is a liberalism that insists that genders can be changed, and there's nothing wrong with books in public schools that explore sodomy.  That exceeds the boundaries of the loosely defined structure for Southern Cultural Christians and is definitely gravely immoral to Christian Nationalists, as well as frankly gravely immoral to any Christians of any stripe who are serious about what their faiths hold.

In 2008, I stopped at the liquor store on my way home from work to buy a six-pack of beer.  It was late summer.

In the liquor store there were two young women, in their very early 20s, with a young man of the same age.  One of the young women was holding a baby.

The girl, and that's really what she was, holding the baby was pretty, but in a trashy sort of way, and in the way that you know won't last.  The other girl was not.  Both young women were wearing t-shirts that were too small for them, and too tight to be decent.  They were both wearing Daisy Dukes.  The young man was shaking and incredibly disheveled.  It was pretty clear that he was the father of the baby, equally clear that he and the young woman weren't married, and just as clear that he was a tweaker.

The pretty girl holding the baby had eyeliner and a proud visage, sort of like the pretty but trashy girls did back when I was in high school. They'd retained the eyeliner sort of make up that girls in junior high wore, back when I was in junior high, after girls of that age first started taking up makeup.  Most girls abandoned that by high school, but the ones that were of a certain type didn't.  That girl, the pretty one, was wearing an Obama for President t-shirt.  I knew at that moment, well before the election, who would win.

The image that was on the girl's t-shirt.  It wasn't "Hope" that they had a vested interest in.

Now, this isn't a comment on President Obama at all, but rather on something else, and that something else gets back to Rich Men North of Richmond.

The young man in that group is likely dead by now.  Tweaking in his early 20s, it's unlikely he survived another fifteen years.  The girl who the mother likely is, and if she was 21 then, she's 36 now.  She's also likely in the 300 lbs category the song referenced, the signs of that already being there.  And indeed, what she was supporting, and likely at least her female cohort, wasn't "hope", as Obama was espousing, it was government assistance.  The child, now 15, has probably spent his or her entire life on it.

And that, in some vague sort of way, is what Oliver Anthony is lamenting.  

All of these people likely descended from people who had held blue collar jobs.  But a modern society reconstructed in a liberal image had turned them into wards of the government in some ways, and they weren't ashamed of it.  Their attachment to any sort of conventional morality had lapsed, perhaps beyond repair, and they were reproducing without structure and raising a generation behind them, perhaps as they'd been raised, that recalls Philippians,  "Their end is destruction, their god is the belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things."  They didn't go on to be Megan Rapinoe, who would be just about their age, almost undoubtedly, but probably heavily tattooed, and living on the funds generated by others.

A large number of abandoned rust belt and other blue collar Americans are well aware of this, even if they aren't necessarily beyond some of the call of that themselves.

That's what liberal pundits are missing, and that's what populist, some sincere and some not, have picked up on.

El Paso Sheriff : What's it mean? What's it leadin' to? You know, if you'd have told me 20 years ago, that I'd see children walking the streets of our Texas towns with green hair and bones in their noses, I just flat-out wouldn't have believed you.

Ed Tom Bell : Signs and wonders. But I think once you quit hearing "sir" and "ma'am," the rest is soon to foller.

El Paso Sheriff : Oh, it's the tide. It's the dismal tide.

No Country For Old Men. 

And that's why their message is failing.

And for traditional conservatives, as, well as liberals, there may now be, by this time, something even scarier at work. . . 

Lex Anteinternet: Vincit qui se vincit

Lex Anteinternet: Vincit qui se vincit: 

Vincit qui se vincit

It is so easy for those who have made their money under a given system to think that that system must be right and good. Conservatism is for that reason nothing else than a pseudo-philosophy for the prosperous. - 

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, Communism and the Conscience of the West, p. 81

This is going to hit California and Baja Mexico:

Coastal Watches/Warnings and Forecast Cone for Storm Center

Forecast Length*	Forecast Track Line	Initial Wind Field
Full Forecast 3 days	On Off	On Off

* If the storm is forecast to dissipate within 3 days, the "Full Forecast" and "3 day" graphic will be identical

Click Here for a 5-day Cone Printer Friendly Graphic

How to use the cone graphic (video):

About this product:

This graphic shows an approximate representation of coastal areas under a hurricane warning (red), hurricane watch (pink), tropical storm warning (blue) and tropical storm watch (yellow). The orange circle indicates the current position of the center of the tropical cyclone. The black line, when selected, and dots show the National Hurricane Center (NHC) forecast track of the center at the times indicated. The dot indicating the forecast center location will be black if the cyclone is forecast to be tropical and will be white with a black outline if the cyclone is forecast to be extratropical. If only an L is displayed, then the system is forecast to be a remnant low. The letter inside the dot indicates the NHC's forecast intensity for that time:

D: Tropical Depression – wind speed less than 39 MPH
S: Tropical Storm – wind speed between 39 MPH and 73 MPH
H: Hurricane – wind speed between 74 MPH and 110 MPH
M: Major Hurricane – wind speed greater than 110 MPH

NHC tropical cyclone forecast tracks can be in error. This forecast uncertainty is conveyed by the track forecast "cone", the solid white and stippled white areas in the graphic. The solid white area depicts the track forecast uncertainty for days 1-3 of the forecast, while the stippled area depicts the uncertainty on days 4-5. Historical data indicate that the entire 5-day path of the center of the tropical cyclone will remain within the cone about 60-70% of the time. To form the cone, a set of imaginary circles are placed along the forecast track at the 12, 24, 36, 48, 72, 96, and 120 h positions, where the size of each circle is set so that it encloses 67% of the previous five years official forecast errors. The cone is then formed by smoothly connecting the area swept out by the set of circles.

It is also important to realize that a tropical cyclone is not a point. Their effects can span many hundreds of miles from the center. The area experiencing hurricane force (one-minute average wind speeds of at least 74 mph) and tropical storm force (one-minute average wind speeds of 39-73 mph) winds can extend well beyond the white areas shown enclosing the most likely track area of the center. The distribution of hurricane and tropical storm force winds in this tropical cyclone can be seen in the Wind History graphic linked above.

Considering the combined forecast uncertainties in track, intensity, and size, the chances that any particular location will experience winds of 34 kt (tropical storm force), 50 kt, or 64 kt (hurricane force) from this tropical cyclone are presented in tabular form for selected locations and forecast positions. This information is also presented in graphical form for the 34 kt, 50 kt, and 64 kt thresholds.

Interestingly, it's going to basically go right over Bakersfield, California, where this lifelong resident of that city is now serving in Congress:

Bakersfield is an oil town, and a rough one.  Kevin McCarthy never worked in the oil patch, but he comes from blue collar roots.  He graduated with a MBA from California State University, Bakersfield, in 1994, but was already in politics by that time.  He's been a member of Congress since 2006.

Kern County is representative of a type of California we hardly think of.  An oil and gas province in a state that we associate originally with agriculture, and then with. . . well itself.  In some ways, McCarthy has been sort of an odd man out in his native state his entire life.  And it must be frustrating, as he's a fourth generation Californian.

That sort of frustration has expressed itself in the nation's politics, on both the left and the right, for some time now.  It's given rise to populism, and that populism has morphed into a form of fascism. Right McCarthy's party is struggling to see if it will be, after the nomination process is over, a conservative party, a populist party, or a fascist party. The fascist is in the lead, but he disregards of the law, a common trait for fascist leaders, may be his undoing.  If it isn't, it risks being the undoing of American democracy.

The fact that "conservatives" no longer apply the broad scope of the word "conserve" may prove to lead to multiple undoings as well.

Bishop Fulton J. Sheen hit on something that ought to be obvious to us all, but in fact It's something rarely occurs to anyone.  Liberals, or progressives as they like to think of themselves, decry the rich as evil on the basis that bad things happen due to wealth and therefore that's evil, and the evil must know that it's evil.  In truth, "It is so easy for those who have made their money under a given system to think that that system must be right and good.", and that doesn't apply only to those who make vast amounts of money in something.  Regular workers feel the same way.  Tobacco farmers probably almost never thought to themselves about how their product directly resulted in cancer, and if they did, they must have mentally excused it, for example.

Systems are big, and big systems have to be addressed at a big level.  Germans who worked in factories that were converted to war products as the war went on weren't in the same position as Albert Speer.  But attempting to sanctify your occupation and livelihood (something I'll note that is very common for lawyers to do) doesn't change the reality of things.

This the first tropical storm to hit California like this in 84 years, the last such one being 1939's El Cordonazo.  That storm was not only the last one, it's the only one to have made landfall in California in the 20th Century.  We've had the terrible fires in Maui. We've had terrible fires in Canada all summer long.  The list goes on.

The GOP is loud on the Biden "radical climate agenda".  At least one of our local Congressional representatives, I'd wager, can be guaranteed to come on Twitter or Fox News within the next 30 days and complain about "Biden's radical climate agenda".  The truth is, humans should not dare alter the climate, and just because I make money from things that might doesn't mean that it can't happen.

After this storm hits Bakersfield, McCarthy, along with the other top GOP leaders, should go to Kern County and explain what they're doing.  McCarthy is Catholic (one of our three Congress people was, but long since adopted a Protestant faith, the latter allowing divorce and remarriage, although I don't know that's the reason that he did so).  In Catholic theology, lying about serious matters is a grave sin.

I note that as I feel that most of these people, although not all of them, know better.  If they don't know better, they can be excused, I guess, for not knowing better, but they can't be for willfully blinding themselves to the truth, which certainly can and does occur.

We really don't need Kevin McCarthy blathering about Hunter Biden.  There's no excuse for ignoring the real, and difficult, problems of the day.  You can feed red meat to the dogs, but once that's gone, and they're starving, they'll be coming for you.  

People cheered Mussolini when he marched on Rome.  They then hung around and celebrated his demise 20 years later.  Austrians lined the streets when Hitler visited after the Anschluß, and were pretty glad to see the Nazi go just a few years later.  

People who faced reality and undertook to engage it are better remembered than those who buried their heads in the sand and tried to ignore it.  People don't sing the praises of John C. Calhoun today.  They're not going to sing the praises of Ted Cruz tomorrow.  People remember Lindbergh for what he did heroically, not for being an American Firster before December 7, 1941.

There's an opportunity here to be grasped, but will it be.  Of couse, is there even an audience for it.  The Wyoming GOP has been busy censuring its members for not falling into the fantasy right.  People like to hear that they're beautiful, that smoking won't hurt you, and that you can go ahead and have that fourth beer before you drive home.

 Really worth listening to, but not happy listen:

POWER AND AUTHORITY

Lex Anteinternet: The Shoes of the Fishermen, Tax Collectors, Tent M...

Lex Anteinternet: The Shoes of the Fishermen, Tax Collectors, Tent M...: 

The Shoes of the Fishermen, Tax Collectors, Tent Maker . . .

The Calling of the Apostles Peter and Andrew.

In spite of commenting on nearly every social trend imaginable, one thing that I've generally not done here is to comment on Pope Francis, at least not often, even though I'm obviously Catholic.  The reasons are several fold.

For one thing, the Pope is the Pope, like the Pope or not.  As the Pope, he deserves respect of a special kind. Every occupant of the office deserves that.

Additionally, orthodox Catholics believe that no Pope can damage the essential teaching of the Church, and I’m an orthodox Catholic. This is often misunderstood. The Holy Spirit protects the Church from error, but not from having bad Popes, and we've had plenty of them.  We were exceedingly lucky in recent decades in having excellent Popes, with the examples stretching from at least St. Pope John Paul II the Great up to Pope Benedict (well, I guess that's two Popes) being paramount.  This is not to dis the examples prior to that, although there are some things that the Pope John and Pope Paul did that I'm not thrilled with, but there are things that they did which I think were outstanding.  

To really get horrifying examples of bad Popes, you need to go to the Middle Ages. But at the same time, they provide a comforting example, as even though there were some that exhibited terrible personal vice, and at least one who was elected specifically to attempt to make a major theological change, they didn't damage the Church.  Indeed, the one who was inclined to make a major theological change, couldn't do it when he was elected.  He felt himself held back, which is an example of my point.

Modern media tends to exaggerate things and not grasp it, while current audiences in the Internet Age tend to do the same.  And all this focuses attention on everything the Pope says or does, which was never the case to this extent in the past, and certainly not in the pre World War Two past.  This really impacts how we see the Pope.  Today, lots of Protestants who don't really understand the Papacy and have a Protestantized inaccurate view of the Church and its history will cite to the example of Galileo as something horrible the Pope did (not grasping that neither the Pope nor the Church did what they think was done), but at the time, the average Catholic would have known nothing about it, which would include most Priests.  For most of the post Apostolic Age history, the local Bishop mattered more to the average Catholic, in terms of day to day living, than the Pope did, which is not to say that they were not aware of the Pope.

Pope Benedict was really the first Pope of the Internet Age, with Pope Francis being the second.  Pope Francis has been particularly liable towards being misunderstood and misquoted due to change in information technology.  He has actually said some extremely orthodox things that get very little attention, and some of the things he's otherwise said or written have been highly misunderstood. 

In an example of the latter, in what we'll not coin as the Fox News Effect, the Pope's early encyclical that discussed economics was immediately branded by conservative American Catholics as "socialist" when it was anything but, really being more Distributist in nature.  However, Internet media allowed for an audience that was already expecting anything written by the Pope to be left wing leaped on it, which was made easier as current Americans are pretty much wholly unaware of Catholic Social Teaching and the concepts of Distributism.  If it ain't Capitalism, it must be Socialism, and therefore Pope Francis must be a Socialist, ran the defective logic.

Finally, in something I've noted for a while but which I heard just this past week in an interview of the head of EWTN News (with EWTN actually being a media source that the Pope has criticized), Pope Francis has a very odd, and slow moving, management style in which he draws things out over a very long time, while rising up things to the top that he actually opposed, only to cut them off at seemingly the point at which they're fully developed. I've suspected for some time that the upcoming Synod On Synodality¹ will feature that, with all sorts of radical things being suggested and then cut off, issuing something pretty orthodox.

Having said all of that, and while being respectful of the Pope, I don't think the Pope grasps very well the nature of the Church in its loyal orthodox quarters and his managerial style doesn't correlate with the modern Internet Age at all.  For that reason, it's hurting the Church.  Not only hurting it, but it's pushing it towards schism.

Pope Francis issued some blistering criticism of the German Bishops and their radical views arising out of their synod, for example.  While getting into the mind of the German Bishops is something we really cannot do, and they deserve respect as Bishops, it seems clear that they ignored his entreaties and pushed ahead with the potential goal of trying to influence what the Synod on Synodality will do.  It's worth noting that the Church is really suffering in Germany, and there's no good reason to believe that abandoning St. Paul's guidance and instruction on matters will change that. There's certainly no good reason to believe that this can validly be done.  The Pope spoke, but he didn't crack down on things.  He seems to have allowed it to play out, knowing that it will come up again in the Synod.  Interestingly, while it hasn't gotten very much attention in the U.S., he's appointed at least one German critic of the German Bishops, who is a Bishop, as a German voting delegate.

Again, I suspect that he intends to allow a general airing of everything, and then cut off that which is not orthodox.  Not that there won't be changes made.

Anyhow, this slow motion managerial style is hurting the Church and driving it towards schism.  Pope Francis doesn't seem to realize, or if he does, appreciate that by the time the Snyod arrives we may be so far down this path that avoiding a massive level of damage may be impossible.

I feel so strongly about this I ardently wish that Pope Francis would resign and a younger, more plainly orthodox Pope, and much less culturally European one, be elected.

Indeed, one of the things that I feel really needs to occur is that there be a general overhaul in Bishop's ages.  It's the old Bishops, and lots are old, that seem to be rooted so strongly in the 1970s that they can't get their Weltanschauung out of it.  The artwork for the Synod bizarrely demonstrated that, as it was right out of the horrifying 1970s in appearance, complete with Comic Sans Serif font.  The appearance of that was almost calculated to disinterest anyone born after 1960, let alone 1980.  Added to that, the announcement early on, which was from the Vatican, that there be local meetings of parishioners for input just doesn't match, in my view, the reality of every location in the Church.  My guess is that in Africa, where the Church is strong and orthodox, you would get a lot of rank and file parishioners at meetings.   In the worn out industrialized West, you aren't going to.  And I'm not the only one with this view.  Indeed, I read a blog entry by a highly orthodox Priest, Fr. Dwight Longnecker, a convert from Anglicanism, who wrote a really bitter blog entry which noted:

All these efforts are akin to re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. They all have minimal results and are usually remembered for their sappy media efforts (badly produced videos- tacky brochures with stock photos of smiling Christians doing good things–ill conceived “youth events” etc) and their inept attempts to be cool, relevant, up to date and simply irresistible.

However they are all highly resistible. Ordinary people smell a committee and simply ignore it or run the other way. The only people who get involved are the earnest activists who use the gimmick to promote their own agenda and ideology.

* * *

In the meantime vast numbers of ordinary Catholics are simply going about their business of living the historic faith and getting the job done.

That's much more bitter than I'd dare post, and I think it may cross the line on respect to the Pope, but the committee thing strikes me that way.  The Catholics you need to speak up are the young, orthodox ones, in the pews, not the aged hippy Boomer parishioners who have time on their hands and who like committees.

If I were the Pope, and of course I'm not, and never will be, I'd open the Synod with a request that any Bishop over 40 years old resign.  If they wouldn't, I'd start reassigning them to Bishopric's dating from the early Church in North Africa (which does happen, actually, in order to preserve their place) and appoint new ones. But I'm not the Pope.

That's really rude, of course, and not all of the Bishops are ancient by any means.  I saw that one of the former Bishops of my diocese, who I'd regard as an orthodox, and not ancient, Bishop was appointed by the Pope to go.

Bishop Etienne of Seattle, who was once the Bishop of Cheyenne, who has been appointed by the Pope to attend.

And indeed, perhaps that Bishop, Bishop Etienne, may be more representative of the general ages than others that I seem to have in mind.

I hope I'm wrong about all of this, and I don't expect the Synod to do anything so radical as to be destructive, other than that its current format itself is doing damage.  I don't expect it to endorse sodomitic unions, or anything of the like.  I expect that it will confirm what the Church has always taught about marriage and the like.  It may very well suggest that Priests be allowed to marry, which I think the Church should, but which s really only a popular idea amongst practicing Catholics in certain regions, rather than globally, which raises another problem.  I think the Pope, coming from Argentina, and of strongly European background, doesn't really get that the problems in some regions are totally different than those elsewhere.

In terms of controversy, I do suspect that some controversial things will be done, with possibly allowing women to be deacons to be one. And I fear that.  The Church in the United States has never really gotten over the "Spirit of Vatican II", which wasn't actually the same thing as Vatican II itself.  There's a real risk here that some efforts to reach "understanding" on things that are solely European culture developments and byproducts of wealth and idleness, such as self-absorbed focus on gender, will end up in a "Spirit of Snyodality" which will breath a last gasp of life into the Boomer era and all its resultant ills.  It's not hard to go from, essentially, don't oppress the those afflicted with gender confusion into localized clerical blessing that were never actually authorized.

Leaping back to something noted just above, I'm going to leap back to Fr. Dwight Longnecker's blog entry, where he stated:

One of the precious Catholic principles is that of subsidiarity which teaches that “solutions should be found and initiatives taken at the lowest local level possible.” In other words, “Live local. Do what you can with what you have where you are.” The clergy, the bishops, the Diocesan hierarchy and the Vatican are all there to serve, direct and guide these local efforts. The synodical process made a show of consulting at the local level, but it was the ordinary clergy and people at the local level who were expected to serve the synodical process by filling in a form of carefully worded “Questions”–questions devised by the synod people in order to facilitate their pre arranged agenda.

In any business of even moderate level of success the leadership will watch what is going on, see what is working well, support those efforts and seek to replicate them throughout the business. If you ran a chain of hamburger restaurants and you had one branch that had sales greater than everyone else’s you would study what was working well and motivate the other branch managers to imitate that success.

But in the Catholic Church there does not seem to be any awareness of such a tactic. We have reports of parishes and schools closing, dioceses amalgamating parishes, Catholic colleges languishing, religious orders closing down and dying out while at the same time we have reports of parishes packed with young families, schools with waiting lists, religious orders thriving with many young novices and colleges and universities with record enrollment.

If subsidiarity instead of synodality were the guiding principle the Catholic leadership would look again at the parishes, schools, colleges and religious orders that are thriving and ask why they are bucking the depressing trends and how their example might renew the church. This strategy might just inspire and motivate the clergy and faithful. More top-down mandated committees steered by failed ideologues will not.

Again, without really endorsing everything he has says, I think he's really on to something.

St. John by Rubens.

The Church was spread by fairly young Middle Eastern men, at least one of whom (St. Peter) may have had a family in tow.  Some of them lived into their 60s, which is remarkable for their era, and all the more remarkable as their deaths came violently. St. John lived to the blistering old age, then or now, of 88.  The real exception of St. John aside, and noting that it's remarkable that some lived into their 60s, and one perhaps into his very early 70s, it's interesting to note that they commenced their work when still int their vigor, and it was concluded when they still were as well, it being the case that save for the ill or very injured, men in their 60s are still pretty able.²  

There's a real lesson in this.  St. John, the last living Apostle, never became the Pope, and he lived into the papacy's of at least two successors to St. Peter.  He never became head of the Church. That went to younger men.

Right now, the College of Cardinals are voting in Pope's who are well above the ages that the first Popes were, and well above the ages of the Apostles.  

Those Apostles spread the Church from a localized subset of Jews to a Church which, even during their own lives, stretched beyond the borders of the Roman Empire.  It's not folly to think that regaining ground lost, and gaining new ground today, needs the involvement of orthodox men who are of the same age now that the Apostles were when they started off.  And it's not folly to think that a Church spread by a fire lite in Africa by the orthodox devout shouldn't now be spread by a fire burning in Africa, by the orthodox devout.

If the Synod accomplishes something, and we should all hope it does, perhaps it should accomplish that. The problem today isn't the passing relevance of a small number of clerics in European cultured countries who took up their vocations in a different era, let alone the lingering zeitgeist of a small number who took up vocations to escape the public eye when homosexuality was disdained, or the culture of countries that are so rich that they have nothing to think about but food and sex.³  The problem may be, in part, the problems that those problems are causing, but there's reason to think that regions of the globe that haven't addressed them culturally aren't going to clerically.  Africa, and North America are where things have more hope, Africa in particular.  Fr. Longnecker's point above would suggest that a really radical solution to the problems in the Church today might be warranted, grounded in subsidiarity and solidarity, but that's not going to come out of state funded churches that are a legacy of a German concordat or from a those sectors of the globe where pondering sex all day prevails.  

Footnotes:

1. The official title is the Sixteenth Ordinary General Assembly of the Synod of Bishops.

2.  It can be hard in some instances to know when the various apostles were born or died.  Indeed, the circumstances of their deaths, undoubtedly known to the early Church, have been lost over time.  To the extent that I can easily find references, their ages ate their times of death were:

St. Peter and St. Paul were both martyred in their 60s.

St. Andrew was between 55 and 65.

St. James:  40s?

Thomas was 62 or 68

St. Bartholomew was 68 to 70.

It's really worth noting that all of these men lived pretty long lives, except for St. James, who was martyred in his 40s.  They didn't live easy lives at all, but they lived into ages that many people did not, due to disease and injury. Given their travels, this is all the more remarkable.

3. The entire focus on homosexuality and the made up category of LGBTQ+ is a Western World, rich country, thing.

We do not mean to say that same sex attraction, or people afflicted with a desire to be a different gender (or even species. . . yes that occurs) doesn't happen, but the concept that it categorizes a person or that it is "normal" is entirely a European culture thing and occured only very, very recently.

We've gone into this before, but in some cultures, including cultures which are very well populated and frankly outnumber our own, the concept that people "are" something like LGBTQ is disdained and not believed.  It's regarded, in fact, and perhaps rightly, as an evidence of a vast stage of cultural and moral decay.

As noted in other posts, as recently as the late 19th Century Western culture didn't recognize homosexuality or gender bending as anything other than odd vices, although it treated them as very serious odd vices.  It's only much more recently that they were treated as psychologically organic in the person afflicted with them, and for much of that time these were regarded as mental illnesses.  Treating them as "normal" is very recent, and comes with virtually no scientific backing whatsoever.  Indeed, the entire field of psychology in this area is really just European cultural sociology focused on radical individualism.  Not only, therefore, might it be wrong, but evolutionary biology would suggest that it probably is wrong.

The reference to misdirected vocations here refers directly to a thesis developed here that the appearance of homosexuality in a small number of Catholic clerics in the middle section of the 20th Century is related, in the author's opinion, to an effort by middle class American (and probably other) men to have an excuse as to why they didn't marry.  Unmarried men were a suspect class throughout the second half of the 20th Century, after societal wealth rose to the level that bachelorhood due to economics no longer provided an excuse for being single.  Prior to that, actually, quite a few men didn't marry simply because they couldn't afford it and marriage was often noted to be a heavy financial burden for men.  Middle class men who, prior to 1940 could have passed it off due to circumstances no longer could.  For Catholic men, the clergy presented an opportunity for a more or less middle class career where the question of "why aren't you married"" wasn't going to arise.  Again, only a small number of clerics were every homosexual, but it doesn't take a large number to do damage.

It's become popular to immediate declare that this really has no relationship to the Priest abuse scandals that the Church has been rocked with, but to at least a certain extent, this is a willful ignoring of the evidence.  The John Jay report clearly noted the following:

From the John Jay Report.

Usually you are supposed to issue an immediate disclaimer and note that homosexuality isn't associated with pedophilic behavior.  Well, frankly, homosexuality was associated with homosexual men hitting on homosexual teenage boys.  It simply was, and this was very well known prior to the official shift in attitudes.

With that shift in attitudes has come the entire "homosexuality is normal" mantra, while at the same time nobody wants to say the next few lines, which is that if homosexual attractions are normal, and wanting to be another gender is normal, then why wouldn't trying to bed teenagers and children be normal?  Indeed, they would be.  In truth, however, they're all abnormal, and we know that instinctively.

But in the rich Western society of the late 20th Century and early 21st, we now hold that all sexual inclinations and desires, other than ones that drop below a statutorily set line, are normal.  That we know that is wrong is part of what is enraging conservative Catholics now, as they watch Fr. James Martin, S.J. be appointed to the Synod.  And its hard not to be sympathetic with the upset.  Fr. Dwight Longnecker suggested, in jest, that Fr. Z be appointed, but not in jest, I really wish he would have been.  

But here's the thing, the entire Priest scandal thing is really old news. The young Priests have rocketed past it, and are orthodox.  This topic is really, in may ways, a Death of the Reformation, death of the WASP class, topic that we don't need to discuss at all.  That we are, shows a focus on a decaying, Boomer centric, European society that will itself move past this, one away or another, as Boomers fade.

Lex Anteinternet: Can't win for losing. Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action.

Lex Anteinternet: Can't win for losing. Supreme Court Strikes Down A...: 

Can't win for losing. Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action.

For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.

At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. See, e.g., 4 App. in No. 21–707, at 1725– 1726, 1741; Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 10. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.) “[W]hat cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. The Constitution deals with substance, not shadows,” and the prohibition against racial discrimination is “levelled at the thing,not the name.” Cummings v. Missouri, 4 Wall. 277, 325 (1867). A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.

Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

The judgments of the Court of Appeals for the First Circuit and of the District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina are reversed.

It is so ordered.

After a series of decisions on cases which liberal pundits were in self afflicted angst about in which the Court didn't realize their fears, the Court finally did realize one and struck down affirmative action admission into universities, something it warned it would do 25 years ago.

The reason is simple. Race based admission is clearly violative of US law and the equal protection clause. That was always known, with the Court allowing this exception in order to attempt to redress prior racism.  As noted, it had already stated there was a day when this would end.  The Court had been signalling that it would do this for years.

Indeed, while not the main point in this entry, it can't help be noted that when the Court preserves a policy like this one, which it did last week with the also race based Indian Child Welfare Act, liberals are pretty much mute on it.  There are no howls of protest from anyone, but no accolades either.  Political liberals received two (expected, in reality) victories from the Court in two weeks that they'd been all in a lather regarding. They seemed almost disappointed to have nothing to complain about, until this case, which gave them one.

Predictably, the left/Democrats reacted as if this is a disaster.  It isn't.  Joe Biden instantly reacted.  Michele Obama, who has a much better basis to react, also made a statement, pointing out that she was a beneficiary of the policy, which she was.  That's fine, but that doesn't mean that the policy needed to be preserved in perpetuity.

At some point, it's worth noting, these policies become unfair in and of themselves.  Not instantly, but over time, when they've redressed what they were designed to.  The question is when, and where.  A good argument could be made, for example, that as for the nation's traditionally largest minority, African Americans, this policy had run its course.  In regard to Native Americans?  Not so much.

Critics will point out that poverty and all the ills that accompany it still afflict African Americans at disproportionate levels, and that's true. The question then becomes why these policies, which have helped, don't seem to be able to bridge the final gap.  A whole series of uncomfortable issues are then raised, which the right and the left will turn a blind eye to. For one thing, immigration disproportionately hurts African Americans, which they are well aware of.  Social programs that accidentally encouraged the break-up of families and single parenthood hit blacks first, and then spread to whites, helping to accidentally severely damage American family structures and cause poverty.  Due to the Civil Rights movement, African Americans became a Democratic base, which was in turn abandoned by the Democrats much like Hard Hat Democrats were, leaving them politically disenfranchised.  Black membership in the GOP has only recently increased (although it notably has), as the black middle class and traditionally socially conservative black community has migrated towards it, but that migration was severely hindered by the legacy of Reagan's Southern Strategy, which brought Southern (and Rust Belt) Democrats into the party and with it populism and closeted racism.

While the left will howl in agony on this decision, it won't really do anything that isn't solidly grounded in the 1960s, and 70s, and for that matter probably moribund, about the ongoing systemic problems.  Pundits who are in favor of institutionalizing every child during the day will come out mad, but they won't dare suggest that immigrants take African American entry level jobs.  Nobody is going to suggest taking a second look at social programs that encourage women of all races to marry the government and fathers to abandon their offspring, something that Tip O'Neill, a Democrat, noted in regard to the African American family before it spread to the white family.  The usual suspects will have the usual solutions and the usual complaints, all of which aren't working to push a determinative solution to this set of problems.

Hardly noted, yet, we should note here, is that this decision, just like Obergefell and Heller, will have a longer reach than people now seem to note.  If college affirmative action is illegal, then similar race based programs (save for ones involving Native Americans, who are subject to the Indian Commerce Clause) are as well. And maybe so are gender based ones, including ones that take into account the ever expanding phony categories of genders that progressive add to every day.  In other words, if programs that favor minority admission into university are invalid, probably Federal Government policies that favor women owned companies over others are as well.

Indeed, they should be.

Societies have an obligation to work towards equality before the law, and before society, for all.  But the essence of working on a problem is solving it.  The subject policy was successful for a long time, but this institutionalized favoritism was no longer working to a large degree, and for that matter, in some instances, impacting others simply because of their race.  It's not 1963, 1973, or 1983 any longer.  New thoughts on old problems should be applied.

Some of those new thoughts, frankly, should be to what extent must we continue to have a 1883 view of the country as if it has vast unpopulated domains to settle that it needs to import to fill.  Another might be, however, that American society really has fundamentally changed on race even within the last 20 years.  While racism remains, and the Obama and Trump eras seem to have boiled it back up, for different reasons, a lot of street level racism really is gone.  For one thing, seeing multiracial couples with multiracial children no longer causes anyone to bat an eye anymore, and that wasn't true as recently as 20 years ago.  We may be a lot further down this road than anyone suspects.

Lex Anteinternet: Something to consider when you see a photo of that...

Lex Anteinternet: Something to consider when you see a photo of that...: 

Something to consider when you see a photo of that buff gal or guy . . .

is are they wealthy or employed in the vapid (i.e., entertainment) industry?

A photo showing a buffed RFK Jr., age 69, brings this up.  I don't know really when it was taken, but people who are logic impaired seem to think this proves his anti vaxing position.

No matter what you think of that, what this proves is that he has piles of time on his hands.

There's a massive difference from being awaked at 3:30 in the morning as United Airlines has cancelled, for the second day in a row, your spouses flight home, and this means you woke up only 30 minutes early, and you go on to get up and fix coffee knowing that everyone you meet today is going to be in a desperate crisis, and you are going to be in crisis central all day long, and then come home and hope that she made it home and isn't stranded somewhere, and to have all of this be normal, than to have all freakin' day to do nothing.

Sure, not everyone who doesn't have to deal with the world all day will look buff. Some will just self-destruct. But part of really looking good, so to speak, is having the time to do it.  And for those in the entertainment industry, well that's their job.

Yeah, a person should take care of themselves.  Many don't. Genes (as the young deaths of some celebrities even show) mean a lot.

But stress, anxiety, injuries and daily living mean a lot too.