Blog Mirror: President Biden's Push to Make Things In America Again
This is really a major political and economic development, but it hasn't received much press:
Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: President Biden's Push to Make Thing...
Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: President Biden's Push to Make Thing...:
Lex Anteinternet: Today
Lex Anteinternet: Today:
Today
Today is Earth Day for 2023.
It's also the first weekend day of Spring Turkey Season, which I should be doing, but I'm in the office working, as the law never sleeps.
Or takes a weekend off.
And today is also Independent Record Store Day.
Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, April 22, 1923. Agrarian rise.
Lex Anteinternet: Sunday, April 22, 1923. Agrarian rise.: 
Sunday, April 22, 1923. Agrarian rise.
The British commenced their occupation of Rawandiz, in Iraqi Kurdistan. The Kurdish city is near the Turkish and Iranian borders. The United Kingdom was occupying the country under a League of Nations Mandate. The border was contested by the Turks, who had occupied the city only a year prior, which motivated the British to garrison the town.
The Bulgarian Agrarian National Union won the vast majority of the seats of the country's Parliament. The agrarian party is the only such party to come to power by a majority of votes being cast for it outright.
The party was a founding member of the International Agrarian Bureau and part of a strong rising agrarian movement in Eastern Europe. The movement would eventually spread to Western Europe as well, but the rise of Communism and World War Two would effectively destroy it and its influence waned. The Bureau dissolved in 1971.
Lex Anteinternet: Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?
Lex Anteinternet: Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking t...:
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Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?
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Real beer, made locally.
In one of the absurd American corporate efforts to get on the cutting edge of a social trend, irrespective of whether it's temporary, existentially justified, or related to the product, Budweiser released an advertisement with Dylan Mulvaney, a man claiming to be transgendered and who affects a very girlish persona, badly, in a cartoonish fashion. Indeed, it's an example of how those who claim to be transgendered men sometime affect a much more girlish behavior than girls do, and it's accordingly more than a little cartoonish. It's a pretty extreme example, which raises its own questions.
Mulvaney is apparently an actor, and came to prominence in the play The Book Of Mormon. I haven't seen the play and don't care to. I'm obviously not a Mormon, but I don't like people poking fun of, or making a satire out of, religious beliefs in that fashion. Eye of the Tiber or The Babylon Bee are one thing, but they aren't actually hostile to religion, and indeed the Bee has come to be controversial as it has started being satirical about society in general, from a general Christian prospective. The three person team who are responsible for The Book Of Mormon, however, are out of South Park, which is an aggressively nasty cartoon, and one of them is a stated atheist and the other, a theist who declares religion itself to be silly, something that shows a massive intellectual deficit on his part. It's sort of like saying that you believe in cars but find transportation silly. They aren't coming out of a prospective of love, suffice it to say, and while I haven't seen The Book Of Mormon, South Park is of the National Lampoon brand of humor which is juvenile, self focused, and mean. I don't know if Book takes a mean spirited approach to Mormons, but what I tend to find is that for people who live outside the Rocky Mountain West, the LDS faith isn't understood in any context at all, and people tend to think of them as 1) some sort of Protestant evangelistic faith, maybe like the Baptists, or 2) something that Warren Jeffs defines, or 3) a tiny silly group. None of that would be correct, and in the Rocky Mountain West the LDS church is a major institution, not some sort of odd joke. From a Christian prospective, particularly in from a Catholic one, there are a lot of things that could be taken on, discussed and critiqued about the LDS, but making fun of them in a sophomoric fashion is disrespectful and reflects very poorly on the people doing it and a society that finds it amusing.
My overall view of mine is that if you wouldn't feel comfortable making analogous jokes about Islam, you probably flat out avoid doing it about any other faith. In other words, if you are going to do a Book of Mormon, you ought to follow it up with The Koran in the same fashion.
That's not going to happen, nor should it either, as The Book Of Mormon shouldn't have.
But I digress.
Mulvaney decided he would affect the appearance of a woman, sort of, at some point and has affected an Audrey Hepburn like style, which nobody in this current age does. Hepburn's style was unique to herself, but she was a genuine, lithe, woman, who genuinely defined grace in her own era, and to a large extent still does. She wasn't girlish, but rather very mature while young at the same time, and frankly rising up in popularity as a reaction to the Playboy influenced huge boob actresses of the time, something that would actually see further influence in the 60s while really being limited, however, to movies and television. Mulvaney on the other hand, if truth be told, looks like a really anemic guy trying to look like a girl, and failing at an attempt to affect an appearance of an actress of a prior era, something he's tried to do in a TikTok series apparently called Days of Girlhood. It's really creepy.
For some weird reason, Budweiser thought he'd make a good spokesman for Bud Light.
Bud Light is awful, as are most of the mass-produced light beers. I don't know why anyone drinks it, which brings me to this, something that has nothing really to do with transgenderism.
Light beer, or American Light Lager as beer aficionados like to call it, is so popular in the US that even small local breweries brew it. Small local breweries have gotten really good, and they tend to put out a better product than huge industrial alcohol concerns like AB InBev, which owns Budweiser.
I really don't think average companies have any place in social movements of any kind. I'll make an exception for companies particularly associated with some sort of institution. So, for example, a company that makes backpacking equipment being involved in conservation, etc., makes sense to me. But beer is just beer. If there was a cause associated with beer, it would be combating alcoholism, but a cause like that wouldn't exactly sell more beer.
Here the decision was blisteringly odd. Is AB InBev trying to show its hip cool and down with the times, in a Justice Kennedy type fashion? The beer market is saturated (no pun), and therefore the only real option left is to try to grab somebody else's market share, but do people who claim to be transgendered constitute a self-conscious body when they buy beer, or are they just people buying beer?
I'm guessing they're just people buying beer.
Obviously AB InBev thought there was some market share to grab there, while not losing some, but as market decisions go, it seems like a rather odd one.
Oh well, it's worth noting that this is the same beer brand that once sent out paintings of Custer's Last Stand, although they probably had their actual market right at that time.
Anyhow, just buy local. If a microbrewery is boosting a cause, it's probably a local one, or one that's more focused, and it probably doesn't involve a cynical marketing effort like this does.
And indeed, just this past week I went to a local microbrewery and bought two small growlers of their beer. It actually did have a beer that it had brewed boosting a cause. I didn't buy it, but I did buy two of their other beers, to go with the first grilling attempt of the season. The brots I bought were from a local butcher.
There are other options out there, and given that there are, why would a person, causes aside, go with a bad massed produced beer, ever?
Lex Anteinternet: Sacrifice. What's Wrong With The World
Lex Anteinternet: Sacrifice. What's Wrong With The World:
Sacrifice. What's Wrong With The World
In the West, we just celebrated Easter. In the East, where the Old Calendar is sometimes used, it's today. This might mean, for the observant, that they were in Church the prior Sunday, in which case, for churches using the Catholic liturgical calendar, they heard this.
Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned,deeply regretted what he had done.He returned the thirty pieces of silverto the chief priests and elders, saying,"I have sinned in betraying innocent blood."They said,"What is that to us?Look to it yourself."Flinging the money into the temple,he departed and went off and hanged himself.
We all know, of course, that Judas was Christ's betrayer. Not too many stop to think that he was seized with remorse and hung himself.
Why was he so miserable?
Probably for the same reason that Western society, on the whole, is.
He thought of himself and chose his own inner wishes rather than being willing to sacrifice.
It's struck me recently that this is the defining quality of our age. We won't sacrifice and don't believe we should have to. It explains a lot.
Interestingly, in a matter of synchronicity, after I started writing this I happened to listen to an episode of Catholic Stuff You Should Know on Augustine's City of God and Lewis' The Great Divorce that ties in perfectly. It's here:
Also, a matter of synchronicity, we passed the 111th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic after I started this.
The wealthy men on board the doomed ship, and a lot of the other men, stayed on the sinking ship so that women and children would be saved. The men who went were largely the crew, needed to man the lifeboats as part of their tasks. Otherwise, men didn't complain, they just stepped aside so that as few women and children as possible wouldn't die. A Catholic Priest stayed with them to prepare them for entry into the next life. All of them were living up to a standard, but the interesting thing to note there is that it was a standard. They were heroic, but not because they exceeded the standard, but rather because the occasion came to apply it, and they unflinchingly did.
Now we shove women into combat, something that in any prior age would be regarded as an outright societal act of cowardice and a complete failure of male virtue.
We've come a long ways, all right. And not in a good way.
Sacrifice was almost the defining quality of any prior age, or at least those that preceded the late 1960s, and very much the defining quality of the 18th through mid 20th Centuries. Men would die before they'd let women and children be injured, and if they didn't, they'd be branded as cowards for the rest of their lives.
Most people married, and marriage was understood to have a sacrificial element to it in numerous ways. People didn't "write their own vows", the vows were part of the ceremony and they were, well, vows. Promises you weren't getting out of, in other words.
Latin Rite English wedding vows still reflect this. The entire series of events reads goes as follows.
First, the Priest asks a series of questions, to which the couple responds "I do", or words that effect:
(Name) and (name), have you come here to enter into Marriage without coercion, freely and wholeheartedly?""Are you prepared, as you follow the path of Marriage, to love and honor each other for as long as you both shall live?""Are you prepared to accept children lovingly from God and to bring them up according to the law of Christ and his Church?"
Only after ascent to that, the Priest reads:
Priest (or deacon): Since it is your intention to enter into the covenant of Holy Matrimony, join your right hands, and declare your consent before God and his Church.Groom: I, (name), take you, (name), to be my wife. I promise to be true to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health. I will love you and honor you all the days of my life.Bride: I, (name), take you, (name), to be my husband. I promise to be faithful to you in good times and in bad, in sickness and in health, to love you and to honor you all the days of my life.
The element of sacrifice is so strong in marriage, that in Croatia, a Catholic country, an added element is present, in which the Priest states:
You have found your cross. And it is a cross to be loved, to be carried, a cross not to be thrown away, but to be cherished.
That's really heavy. That's not a fuzzy bunny, flowery rose, type of view of marriage at all. You're signing up for a real burden.
But one to be cherished.
And that's the thing that the West has lost.
We don't want to sacrifice at all.
If you look at life prior to the late 1960s, sacrifice was darned near universal. Everyone, nearly, married and divorce was rare. People sacrificed for their marriages. Most married couples had children, and having children entailed sacrifice. Reflecting the common values of the time well, the screenwriter of The Magnificent Seven summed it up in this fashion in a comparison of family men to hired gunfighters:
Village Boy 2 : We're ashamed to live here. Our fathers are cowards.
Bernardo O'Reilly : Don't you ever say that again about your fathers, because they are not cowards. You think I am brave because I carry a gun; well, your fathers are much braver because they carry responsibility, for you, your brothers, your sisters, and your mothers. And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground. And there's nobody says they have to do this. They do it because they love you, and because they want to. I have never had this kind of courage. Running a farm, working like a mule every day with no guarantee anything will ever come of it. This is bravery. That's why I never even started anything like that... that's why I never will.
The line, "And this responsibility is like a big rock that weighs a ton. It bends and it twists them until finally it buries them under the ground." was literally true for many. Indeed, it's been noted that up until some point after World War Two Finland, which routinely comes in as the happiest country on Earth, had a very early male death rate, simply because the men there worked hard, and basically worked themselves into the grave for their families.
People were not, of course, perfect, and therefore children naturally arrived on the scene with an unmarried origin. Depending upon the age of the couple, that often ended up in a marriage before the child was born, adding an added element of sacrifice in which the couple sacrificed, in essence, an element of freedom or even their future for what they'd brought about. When that didn't occur, the child was more often than not given up for adoption, which involves an element of sacrifice, but because it arises in a different context, we'll not get too deeply into that.
Things tended to be focused on that fashion. There were people who didn't follow this path, but they were a minority.
This has been portrayed, since the 1970s, as some sort of horrible oppression. But the surprising secret of it is that people seem to be hardwired for it, and when it's absent, they descend into, well, a descent.
None of which is to say that sacrifices aren't present in the modern world. They are, although by and large society tries enormously to avoid them.
It's tried the hardest in regard to the natural instincts of all kinds. People are able to avoid nature, and so they do, least they have to sacrifice. But that's a sacrifice in and of itself, but for what?
The self, is what we were told initially. But the self in this context turns out to be for the economy. In a fairly straight line, we're told that you should avoid commitments to anything requiring commitment, so that you can get a good career, make lots of money, and go to Ikea.
Very fulfilling?
Ummm. . .
No, not at all.
In The Great Divorce, which I haven't read but which Catholic Things summarized extensively, Lewis placed a self focused Anglican Bishop in the role of the self-centered intellect. Self Centered is the epitome of the current age. And that self-centered role placed the figure in Hell.
We're doing a good job of that figuratively for the same reason, and literally as well.
Prior Related Threads:
Lex Anteinternet: 18,000
Lex Anteinternet: 18,000: 
18,000
That's the number of cattle killed in the explosion in Texas. 18,000 dairy cattle.
That's obscene.
I own cattle, and beef cattle at that. But this shows what's really gone wrong with the United States and the Western World. Everything has to be some sort of factory.
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, w...
Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, w...:
Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, part 3. Our lost connection with animals.
ICELANDIC MILKMAID ON HER MORNING ROUND
This is a fine, sturdy pony standing so stockily for his photograph, and he can make light of his burden of buxom beauty with her heavy can of milk. She cares not for saddle or stirrups, for most of these island people are born to horseback, and her everyday costume amply serves the purpose of a riding-habit for this strapping Viking's daughter, with her long tresses shining in the breeze.
(Original caption, of interest here I wouldn't call this young lady "buxom" or "strapping", but just healthy. This might say something about how standards have changed over time.)
The other day, I posted this in a footnote on a completely different topic.
Lex Anteinternet: What's wrong with the (modern, western) world, par...:
4. One of the odder examples of this, very widespread, is the change in our relationship with animals.Our species is one of those which has a symbiotic relationship with other ones. We like to think that this is unique to us, but it isn't. Many other examples of exist of birds, mammals and even fish that live in very close relationships with other species. When this occurred with us, we do not know, but we do know that its ancient. Dogs and modern wolves both evolved from a preexisting wolf species starting some 25,000 to 40,000 years ago, according to the best evidence we currently have. That likely means it was longer ago than that.Cats, in contrast, self domesticated some 7,000 or so years ago, according to our best estimates.Cat eating a shellfish, depiction from an Egyptian tomb.We have a proclivity for both domesticating animals, and accepting self domestication of animals, the truth being that such events are likely part and parcel of each other. Dogs descend from some opportunistic wolves that started hanging around us as we killed things they liked to eat. Cats from wildcats that came on as we're dirty. Both evolved thereafter in ways we like, becoming companions as well as servants. But not just them, horses, pigs, sheep, cattle. . .the list is long.As we've moved from the natural to the unnatural, we've forgotten that all domestic animals, no matter how cute and cuddly they are, are animals and were originally our servants. And as real children have become less common in WASP culture, the natural instinct to have an infant to take care of, or even adore, has transferred itself upon these unwilling subjects, making them "fur babies".It's interesting in this context to watch the difference between people who really work with animals, and those who do not. Just recently, for example, our four-year-old nephew stayed the night due to the snow, and was baffled why our hunting dog, who is a type of working dog but very much a companion, stayed the night indoors. The ranch dogs do not. . . ever. The ranch cats, friendly though they are, don't either.
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I started this thread back in February, when the entire news on "transgenderism" really hit the fan, so to speak. Since that time there's been the filing of the sorority lawsuit in Laramie, a host of transgender mass shooting, and an absolutely freakish campaign by Budweiser in which a guy trying to channel a girl of the 1960s is sponsoring Bud Light. Anyhow, this thread was to tie into it somehow, but now a lot of time has gone by, and working seven days out of seven, etc., I've really forgotten what my brilliant point here was to be, more or less.
But I'll go on anyhow.
This photograph shows a young woman at work, doing something that counted, and doing it in a way that was very close to nature.
So does this one:
Mid Week At Work: Mail Carrier, 1915, Los Angeles
And also this one:
And this one:
The point here?
Well this.
We've gotten to the point where we don't deal with animals as they really are, daily. We also are at the point where a large percentage of the original WASP demographic of the nation (more on this shortly) has lost most of the values it originally had, and replaced them with very weak tea instead. And we've so removed ourselves from a state of nature, that most people don't have a grasp on what nature really is.
It's hard not to know the reality of the world if you live in it.
This past week, the Wyoming Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case in Casper in which the plaintiffs claim they suffered emotional distress as their two pet dogs were caught in snares which they claim were improperly placed on public lands by a trapper. Apparently, in a companion criminal case, the trapper was exonerated. The state land is very close to the city, which is a problem, but it's still state land, and still unincorporated.
Losing dogs is a tragedy, but emotional distress? This has never been allowed in the common law, as the law always held that the law is, basically, for people. If you can claim emotional distress due to the loss of a pet, why not anything?
Now, that sounds cruel, and I understand grieving over the loss of an animal. I've done it myself. That is, in fact, one of the things about owning pets. Normally, you outlive them, and if you are normal, you'll miss them when they die.
It's a part of life.
But emotional distress has been reserved, in the common law, for the loss of humans, based, in the end, for what we feel with the loss of a loved human being. Not an animal, no matter how loved.
And of course, up until recently, there was no such concept as a legally recognized animal for "emotional support". Support they did provide, but the bond was in a naturalistic way, not one for which the law afforded protection.
Have we lost something here?
I think we have, and it's connected with real work and real animals.
We'll explore What's Wrong With The World more in this series of threads, but here's one. Being connected with animals in a real sense, and not in the sanitary removed from nature sense, helped keep us real.
We've lost that.
It's hard to be obsessively focused on yourself, including your reproductive self, if you're around animals as animals, particularly great big ones that can hurt you.
And I'll bet the thought "I'm a girl, but I want to be a boy" didn't much cross the minds of Icelandic pony riding milkmaids, Oklahoman girl cowpunchers, or Los Angeles mounted mail carriers.
Related Threads:
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Springtime
Lex Anteinternet: Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Springtime:
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Springtime
Wyoming Catholic Cowboys - raw and real: Springtime: With springtime in the air, ranching fever is starting to set in. It's time to starting thinking about cattle. With Holy Week taking me ...
Lex Anteinternet: Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point...
Lex Anteinternet: Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point...:
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Moonlight Graham and other lessons. At some point, you are stuck in your career.
Maybe I don't watch enough television to catch them, or maybe the recent financial crises and the pandemic put the brakes on them, but there used to be a lot of financial planner advertisements based on the theme that you could retire into a new exciting career of some sort. You know, you worked hard but invested wisely, and now you were a rancher in Monument Valley (where the locals probably regard you as an interloping menace).
M'eh.
Probably, the story of Archibald "Moonlight" Graham is more realistic.
I love the movie, and always have, but it's a dark film in some ways. Almost every single character in it, no matter how cheerful they are, and they're all cheerful, is laboring under monumental internal regrets. They're provided a chance to banish the regret, but only through Devine intervention, allowing a redress across time.
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Field Of Dreams isn't the only movie that deals with regret, and even Divine intervention, but it's the only one that I'm aware of in which average characters are plagued with it and can only address it in such an intervention. The closest portrayal of a similar topic of which I'm aware is It's A Wonderful Life, in which the protagonist is about to kill himself after years of hard work at a saving and loan business he was basically forced into due to the untimely death of his father. In that film, however, a hapless angel takes him back through the lives of everyone he touched to show him how much worse the lives of those he impacted would be had he not been there. Mr. Holland's Opus is another work that has a similar theme, but with no Divine intervention, in which the dream of the protagonist is shattered by a personal tragedy, but his work, opus, becomes a huge impact on everyone around him. I like both of those films as well, but not as much, and frankly find them dispiriting for all of the wrong reasons.1 I probably shouldn't, as the message of both is profoundly Christian and, well, perhaps this below best expresses it.
A film that takes a distinctly different approach from either is Will Penny, which is a great film. In that film circumstances show an aging single cowboy, who has worked his entire life in that role, what life would have been like had he married and had a family that cared about him. Right up until the end of the film it seems that, now that the opportunity seems to be unfolding, he'll take it, but as it turns out, knowing that it has in reality passed him by, he regrets his decision, but determines to ride off and live with it. It's just too late.
Which brings me to this observation.
Recently, or so it seems to me, once you are over 50, and truth be known at some point earlier than that, unless your big planned career change is one involving only self-employment and doesn't depend much on your physical health, you're pretty much stuck with what you are doing.
The first time that really became evident to me in any fashion, oddly enough, was when I was in my 30s and practicing law. My late mother had a friend who grew up on a ranch and had always wanted to return to his former life. He'd had a long career as a banker, but now, in his 70s, he was trying to return with what was really a hobby farm. He wasn't well enough to do it, and his wife was crippled, so their location out of town was imperiling her health. My mother, who was extremely intelligent but often based her assumptions about somebody based on externals, kept referencing him as a "rancher", which he wasn't. He was still employed at the bank, and it was a hobby farm that was failing.
He moved off of it soon after my mother first referenced him in conversation, and died soon thereafter.
Why, other than that it's always been obvious to anyone who knows me that my internal vocation is one that involves animals and wild country, she pointed that out, I don't know. Probably as she conceived of him as somebody who had combined a city job, banking, with a rural vocation, "ranching" (actually farming), he was, to her, a model of what I could do. My mother was always proud of the fact that I'd become a lawyer and quick to tell anyone that, even though its something I never bring up myself and tend to reveal, to strangers, only if asked. That probably concerned her some as she wondered why somebody who had obtained such an admirable, in her view, professional degree would want to do something that in her personal experience was of a lower status.2 The point was made, as it seemed to make sense to her that a person could pursue agriculture as a hobby while admirably employed in a profession.
I viewed the banker as somebody who'd led an existentially failed vocation, banking, and was trying to make amends too late.
That's a pretty harsh judgement, but I've always been sort of "no quarters" in my view of some things, including myself. Now, some 30 years later, I could easily say the same thing about me, and be quite correct. I've had a long and respected career as a lawyer, which has not involved animals whatsoever, or wild country. I've also been a stockman for most of that time, which does. But my being a stockman is sort of a second activity, made possible as my in laws are the full time stockmen, and I'm part-time. I don't regard that as a personal success, but a personal failure. There's no two ways about it.
For all of my time as a lawyer, I've dreamed of being a judge. That's the sort of dream that's puts you in Moonlight Graham territory as chances are, you aren't going to make it. I first tried to make that switch when I'd only been practicing a few years, at which time, unbeknownst to me, experienced lawyers regarded that as impossible as you needed experience.
Later on I had the experience and applied several times, and passed by some as well. I passed by one as I knew that somebody putting in was so close to an influential figure that he'd get it, which he did. I hope that figure realizes that, even now, he's indebted to an accident of employment for his current position.
The time I first came pretty close, I nonetheless didn't make it to one of the three finalist. A friend did. It was surreal, however, as I received calls from those close to the process informing me I should expect to be one of the three finalists. I received direct information that I'd interviewed very well. When I didn't get it, and another position soon came up, I was called by a host of individuals who were within the system and urged to apply, which I had not intended to do. I did, and didn't make the finals again.
Over time, I've watched the process and realized that politics, which weren't really evident to me early on, played very much a part. One Governor in this time frame had an expressed preference for appointing women, as he thought the bench lacked them and needed them. Over time, it became apparent that women stood a much better chance than men of getting appointed. Well, he's the chooser, so I guess he gets to choose as he will.
The more recent Governor has favored very young appointees and ones who had criminal law experience. I'm no longer young, I'll be 60 next month, and I don't have criminal law experience. Nonetheless, I put in one last time when I was probably 58. Totally pointless.
Since that time, I've awkwardly appeared in front of the very young judge. That judge may turn out to be great, but the judge confessed that the hearing we were at was the first of the type the judge had ever experienced, and the judge wasn't quite sure what to do. I'll give that judge credit for that. Not everyone would admit that.
Well, at 60, I'm not putting in anymore. I'd have to retire at 70, and I'd never get selected. Oh, well.
I'm not the only one in that position. At least one other friend of mine has the same experience. Whenever we've talked about it, we always express it in an "oh well", we didn't expect to get it anyhow, and we still have our careers. But frankly, in my case, it's another career failure. I'll go to my grave as a lawyer knowing that whatever I achieved, I didn't achieve what I'd hoped to, long ago.
Sic transit Gloria Mundi.
Being almost 60, I'm at the age where law journals have articles that claim people like me can have exciting second careers. What they always entail, however, is some lawyer who moved from litigation combat to telling his younger lawyers how to engage in litigation combat, or some lawyer who moved from a big first into one that his son or daughter has, to mentor them. I guess that's sort of a second career, but it really isn't. It's more like going from being the team manager to the pitching coach. You are still showing up wearing pinstripes and a ball cap for the team. And frankly for the overwhelming majority of lawyers in the current legal environment, where it's hard to find a younger lawyer to even hire, it's not realistic.
What's notable about those articles is nobody ever suggests that any of the lawyers that they reference really were able to make a radical shift in the field. None of the Old Hands, for instance, went from practice to teaching. They keep practicing. At most, you see some who went from litigation to transactional within their firms.
And that's about as realistic as that gets. Not that such a transition is meaningless, a lawyer I knew personally who practiced into his 90s had done a similar thing at age 60, and just all of a sudden. The same lawyer, however, had wanted to be a doctor but found his dreams dashed by World War Two, during which he served in the Navy. Coming back, the lost years didn't leave him time, he felt, to do what he wanted to do. Indeed, everything about his educational path changed.
What this does do, however, is point out the reinforcing nature of occupations over time. When the ABA, for instance, runs articles about second careers for lawyers, it's acknowledging that lawyers are looking for second careers, and telling them to stuff it, they're lawyers. Not that this is a surprise as after a person has been practicing for a while, and I'm sure this is true of every other occupation, you're defined in that role. I've ridden up to cow camps on trail after having been in the field for days, dressed as a cow hand, and covered with grime, only to be identified as "oh, you're the lawyer". People who know me only casually from work, when they want to chat, open up topics on legal themes, assuming, logically enough, that what I'd really like to do in the evening while enjoying a cocktail (or more likely a Saturday afternoon at the hardware store) is chat about the law.
Societal expectations, therefore, become reinforcing. You may have a diesel mechanics certificate, but if your prospective employer finds out you're a 50-year-old lawyer, or 40-year-old lawyer, forget it. You're not getting hired as a diesel mechanic.
Radical changes, unless, again, they involve self-employment, age out. I knew one lawyer who became a partner in a small drilling company, but that was a species of self-employment backed by the fact that a collection of business associated had the money, along with him, to invest to start up. Another who had worked for years in a bank, then entered private practice, did it only briefly before returning to the bank. The brief taste of practice was enough. One I personally knew dropped out of practice to become a teacher, and one I sort of knew did the same, but they were in their 40s at the time, with time still being available to them to do that. Probably in their 50s, they wouldn't have been hired.
As I mentioned outdoor professions, one thing I'll note is that the Federal ones have age caps, in some areas, the Federal Government being an employer that can still officially do that. State ones don't tend to have official ones, but they do have unofficial ones. Federal ones tend to be based on retirement. If you can't make 20 years by 60, you aren't getting in.
One that surprised me recently, quite frankly, was the Ukrainian Foreign Legion. Its age cap is 55, which is pretty old actually for entering military service, but it's only taking veterans (and only combat veterans, it claims). Ukrainians men are liable for military service up to age 60s, but Ukraine isn't taking in any old soldiers from other lands. That probably makes sense, really, as you don't know these guys and can't really vet them much before they show up. Some vets of other armies, such as my self, are in pretty good physical health and probably could endure a combat environment just fine (maybe), others have grown sick, tired or fat, and couldn't. There's no point in investing in somebody, whose going to die of a heart attack one week out.
Still, it's interesting as there are so many Western army veterans who trained to fight the very army the Ukrainians are fighting, more or less. We didn't, thank goodness, fight them in the 80s, and we're not going to be fighting them, it appears, now.
Interestingly, the Canadian Army takes in older enlistees now. I don't know how old, but the cutoff age is something like 57 or 58. But those enlistees have to make it through basic training in the Canadian Forces. Apparently Canadian soldiers are part of the general Canadian government old age pension system, and the Canadian government figures they can get a couple of years out of any who make it through basic, which is probably about what they get out of an average enlistee anyway.
As we live in the age of certification, many jobs that were open to people 30 years ago, when I first started practicing law, have had the doors slammed shut if you don't have perfect certification. I know of one such field that loosely interpreted its certification requirements 30 years ago and now very strictly construes them.
Added to that, of course, is the impact of income and influence of disbelief. A professional changing jobs may be enamored with the idea of it, but it's pretty likely that his family, most particularly his spouse, isn't. That's also why most of the real changes, such as for example the instance I know of in which a lawyer became a fireman, happen pretty early in careers. Most professionals don't make the loot that people think they do, particularly when they start out, unless they're recruited into a really high test outfit. Indeed, the one fellow I know who fits that description looks so stressed all the time, I wouldn't be too surprised if his heart just burst out of his chest in a deposition, and he died on the spot. For most younger lawyers/doctors/accountants, etc., they're not pulling in the big bucks early on. At that point, obligations aside, they can make a change as they aren't going to be hurt on a day-to-day basis much.
Obligations, however, change options enormously. Student debt keeps a lot of people in jobs as they have to pay for their educations. By the time they have the debt paid off, chances are they have a family and a mortgage, and that keeps them in place. Most spouses have a low tolerance for dropping family income enormously and while early on couples may endure hardships bounded together by true love, later on the spouse who isn't proposing to drop household income will regard it as insane, bound down by practicalities and perhaps duty to the offspring of the marriage. Shakespeare claimed that "conscience does make cowards of us all", but debt and expenditures have a big role in that.
So too has the return to long family ties of the pre World War Two era and the insurance system of the post World War Two era. Couple of the 50s, 60s and 70s pretty much saw their children blast into independence as soon as they were 18, and more than a few families didn't feel the slightest bit of guilt about basically kicking children out into the cold world once they were that age. It was quite normal. Now it isn't, but then it really wasn't before 1940 either. Be that as it may, that has brought about a return to the situation in which the family bread winner retains some financial responsibility all the way into his kid's late 20s, which not only means late career, but it can be career extending, as people can't quite what they are otherwise doing. I know that I wanted my father to retire when he hit 60, and he wouldn't. But I'd been paying my own freight by that time, at least partially, for quite a while and knew that I could pull it all.
Or so I thought. He probably didn't think that, making him an example of somebody who probably was looking at things just the way I do know, right up until he died at age 62, having never retired.
Insurance is another matter. In the American system you can go on Medicare at age 65, but prior to that, health care is your own problem, and it's expensive. It interestingly gets expensive for most people right about the time that you really need it for the second time in your life, the first time being when women are of child bearing years. Switching from one job to another, where health insurance is covered in one, and isn't in another, is pretty hard for most people. Quite a few people keep on keeping on for years until they qualify for Medicare.4
And self-determination, which a lot of us aren't that good at, plays a major role. You are always faced with decisions when they come up, and you make them, usually, on what is important right then. Personally, the door did open for me to an outdoor career with an agency right after I had become engaged. It involved a massive income drop and a very uncertain future, as it started off with a temporary position. The responsible thing to do, it seemed to me (and it would seem to most) was to forego it, which I did.
Twice wars came up after I had left the National Guard, and in both instances I tried to get in them. That has something to do with being trained to fight. In the first Gulf War I made contact right away with my old Guard unit, but it wasn't called up as it had just switched from heavy artillery to rocketry and wasn't combat ready. The second time I contacted them as well, and then a Colorado infantry unit being deployed, but the first one wasn't called up, and the second one didn't need any artillerymen. As the wars dragged on, it just didn't seem like there was a real reason to join, and I didn't. The door, however, was open in that second instance and I didn't walk through it. At some point it slammed shut due to age, just has it has now for the Ukrainian forces. Немає (no) you are too old, age cap at 55. Будь ласка? (Please?). Nope, but here's some equipment we need you can buy. (Seriously, they suggested some sort of optical equipment, or a drone. I dread to think how much a drone might cost).
And so, the lesson's learned?
Édith Piaf famously sang Je Ne Regrette Rien, but if you look at her life, I'll be she did, and plenty of them. Not that she's a model of an average or even somewhat typical life. Moonlight Graham probably is in many ways, which is probably why the character appeals so much. Maybe everyone watching Field Of Dreams feels that way a little. Maybe not, but I'll bet plenty identify with that character more than any other in the film.
I don't know if most men really lead lives of quiet desperation, but I do suspect that a lot of people highly respected in their careers have unresolved paths they didn't take. That doesn't mean that they didn't enjoy their careers. It may mean they have large or small reservations about the paths they took. I can't even begin to count how many times clients and litigants have told me "I wanted to become a lawyer" (or, pretty often, "I wanted my son to become a lawyer"), followed by a "but". I've known professionals who didn't follow up on professional sports opportunities, who had been in military service and then gotten out, who had left farms and ranches, or who had thought about becoming a Priest or cleric, and didn't, all to some element of regret. Indeed, with big callings, like the Priesthood, it probably downright haunts them.3
For those who recall it, people may imagine themselves singing Je Ne Regrette Rien, or maybe the defiant My Way, but Truckin is probably more like it.
The other lesson may be that the common American claim that you can start off doing one thing, and do anything else, is a lie.
If it's not an outright lie, it comes with an expiration date. Once you are 50 years of age, you are doing what you are doing, most likely, and you won't be getting out of it any time soon, if ever.
And this:
Well, you know I... I never got to bat in the major leagues. I would have liked to have had that chance. Just once. To stare down a big league pitcher. To stare him down, and just as he goes into his windup, wink. Make him think you know something he doesn't. That's what I wish for. Chance to squint at a sky so blue that it hurts your eyes just to look at it. To feel the tingling in your arm as you connect with the ball. To run the bases - stretch a double into a triple, and flop face-first into third, wrap your arms around the bag. That's my wish, Ray Kinsella. That's my wish. And is there enough magic out there in the moonlight to make this dream come true?
Not without Divine intervention, there isn't. And even as the movie portrays, decisions made in the past cannot be undone. Graham reconciles it with
Son, if I'd only gotten to be a doctor for five minutes... now that would have been a tragedy.
My wife sometimes makes the same point about my career, with "all the people you've helped". But then, this too:
We just don't recognize life's most significant moments while they're happening. Back then I thought, "Well, there'll be other days." I didn't realize that that was the only day.
Footnotes
1. I'm afraid that I'm an oddity with some films this way. Shane, the classic Western in which the protagonist comes back out of retirement in order that besieged farmers aren't run off by cattlemen, is an example. I know how the film ends, but I always hope that the cattlemen will win, and the wilderness they represent preserved.
2. My mother was not from here, and didn't hold farmers and ranchers in low esteem, but rather held professionals in very high esteem. Her family had members who had been doctors, lawyers and engineers and she regarded this as having achieved a certain status. A lot of people of her generation viewed the professions that way, and frankly, quite a few people still do.
She also tended to view being a lawyer as proof of high intelligence, which it really is not. A Democrat, she'd frequently give a reason to support President Obama as "he's intelligent. . . he's a lawyer". President Obama is intelligent, and he is a lawyer, but in reality, there are lots of fairly dim lawyers.
3. Indeed, that's one of the ones that's most openly expressed. I've known lawyers who, once they know you fairly well, will discuss having been in the seminary, or who wanted to be Priests, and it's a different conversation. It's always pretty clear that they're downright haunted by their change into the law, no matter how much success they may have had in it. Conversely, I've known one Priest who had been a lawyer and at least one who had originally intended to be, who had no regrets whatsoever about their change in paths.
Of interest here, there's often an age limit to attempting to revive a vocational call. Canon Law in the Catholic Church sets no age limit to becoming a Priest, but many dioceses do, and for good reason. Training a Priest takes nearly a decade. While I can think of stories of some "older" men becoming Priests, in reality, they were middle-aged men when they started off.
Likewise, there's a limit on trying to become a Catholic Deacon, a vocation that's spread enormously in recent decades. In our Diocese, the provision is:
The minimum age for a single man to be ordained to the permanent diaconate is twenty-five (25) years old, and thirty-five (35) years for married men. Maximum age to enter the Diaconal Formation Program is fifty-five (55) years (age 60 at ordination), unless the Bishop allows an exception.
Sixty is surprisingly late, quite frankly, and I wonder if this has been recently moved as I thought the age limit lower, although not much. Be that as it may, I know this only because at one time our African Parish Priest sent out letters to several men whom he thought would be good Deacons. I was one. I was flattered by the letter but knew I wasn't called, but I did pray on it. I'm not called, working on my own defects is a full time enough job as it is.
4. The combined impact of insurance and family responsibilities in the current era is enough, in and of itself, to quash a lot of late career transition dreams. Before Medicare, many people are hard locked into careers due to the need to keep their insurance. Changes in the law, over time, have also meant that parents pay for their adult children's insurance well into their 20s. Changing careers that involve insurance disruption is darned near impossible for many people.
And it likley would be for me, after my health issues of last year and their carryover inot this year.
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