Where have all the local businesses gone? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 6.

Movie poster for And Quiet Flows the Don. What on earth does this have to do with anything?  Well, maybe more than you might figure, as the main character is a local Cossack trying to live a local, and not always all that admirable, life but ends up getting carried away with the tied of events which destroyes all of that.

Donald Trump reportedly just can't grasp why average Americans don't think the economy is doing great.  It's doing great for everyone he knows.  It's doing great for the the Trump family.  It's doing swell for Jeff Bezos.  It's doing great for Elon Musk.  It's only not doing great for his pal Jeff Epstein, as he checked out before he could be spring from jail in one fashion or another and go back to being a teenage girl procurer.

So what, he must be thinking, is the freaking problem?

Well, people like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and the entire Trump family are the problem (and people like Jeff Epstein are as well).

In other quarters people like to debate whether or not the United States is a "Christian nation". Whatever the answer to that might be (I think the answer is yes, but that it's a Puritan country) it was definitely a small freeholder country.  That is, the country was mostly made up of small yeomanry and small tradesmen early on.

Indeed, the widespread use of corporations was illegal in the 1770s and for many years thereafter.  Part of the rebellion against the crown was based on what effectively were export duties, a species of tariff, on chartered businesses, i.e., team importers, that the colonist had no control over and they reacted by destroying the property.  Ironically the very people who emblazon themselves with 1776 themed tattoos in 2026 would have supported King George III doing what he did, just as they support King Donny doing them through executive order.  Shoot, Parliament had actually voted on the tea duties.

Nonetheless, teh country has always had some very large business interests that, when allowed to, operate against the economic interest of everyone else.  They don't want to "share the wealth".  They think their getting wealthy is sharing enough, and good for everyone.  Up until 1865, or instance, we had the Southern planter class, a market set of agriculturalist who destroyed land and people in their endeavors, but believed in it so strongly that they'd argue for the perversion of the Christian faith to support slavery.

It wasn't just Planters, however.  Coal magnates, industrialists, foreign ranch owners, the list is pretty long.

It wasn't until later that absentee merchants dominated "main street", both the actual one or the metaphorical one.  The first chain store is claimed by some to be The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company (A&P), which was founded in 1859.  Woolworth's started twenty years later in 1879.  Piggly Wiggly, the grocery store, showed up in 1916, and proved to be the model for "grocery stores" that would wipe out locally held grocery stores, for the most party, in  the next couple of decades.

Since the mid 20th Century this trend has continued unabated and unaddressed.  Every Walmart represents the destruction, probably, of a half dozen or more locally owned family supported stores.  The appliance section represents the closure of local appliance stores.  The entertainment section of record and video stores.  You name it.

None of this had to be.

There's been a lot of ink spilled on the rise of Donald Trump and what caused it. We've done that ourselves.  Others have noted the presence of small businessmen in the MAGA ranks, but it's been underreported in contrast to the blue collar Rust Belt members of the MAGA rank and file.

It shouldn't be.

When I was young, which is now a very long time ago, the Democratic Party was still regarded as the part of the working class.  Unions, which have never been strong here, were still strong enough to host the annual Jefferson Jackson Day that backed the Democratic Party.  But by 1973 the Democrats started to board the vessel of blood that would end up causing thousands to get off the boat.  By the mid 1990s the party that had been the one hardhats joined became one in you had to be comfortable with a focus on disordered sex and infanticide.  The Democrats, for the most part, forgot the working class.

At the same time, the Republican Party was widely accused of being the Country Club Party, with good reason.  If you were a member of a country club or chamber of commerce, you were probably a Republican or you were weird.  The thing is, however that the economic outlook of the hardhat class and the country club class was closer to each other than they thought and the same neglect hurt both of them severely.

As early as the 1960s, successive Democratic and Republican administrations were really comfortable with exporting business overseas.  Nobody ever outright admitted that, but they were.  And both Democratic and Republican administrations simply stopped enforcing anti trust legislation.  Aggressively applied, entities like Walmart would be busted up, but it just doesn't happen.  Aware of what was going on at first, and trying to struggle against it nearly everywhere, local business failed to arrest the destructive march of the giants.  In part, their efforts were so local that they were like those of Russian peasantry trying to arrest the Red Army. They tried, but doing it locally just won't going to work.  You can't wait until the Red Army is in sight of the village.  Nobodoy lifted a finger at the national or state level to help.

The march of progress (which it wasn't) and free enterprise (which it also wasn't) and all that.

So the small business class became desperate, and in desperation they turned to the guy who offered no answers but who seemed like he might help, Trump.

What an irony, really. Trump doesn't "shop local" and he doesn't have the faintest grasp of what small business is like.  He's spent his eight decades around the wealthy and is more comfortable with bullying smaller economic interest than helping them.

Even now, the bones a small business economy remain.  In order to advance that interest, however, small businessmen have to do something they really aren't comfortable with.

They have to be militant about it.

Part of that involves being militant at the polls.*

And that involves asking some questions, but first it involves waking up to economic and structural realities.

The first of those realities is that the United States does not have a free market economic system, and hasn't for a long time.  It has a Corporate Capitalist economic system that favors state created economic creatures given fictional personhood which favors economies of scale.  The goal is to make prices cheaper, and part of that is to make wagers cheaper.  The consumers are expected to adjust to this by getting new jobs at higher wages, sort of like the protagonist in Kansas City Star.

So, in essence, if you have an appliance store and are taking home, let's say, $150,000 a year, and with that you are trying to provide for all of your family's living expenses, and Walmart comes in, well, you should have become something else, and now this is your chance to go and do that.

Except you probably won't.  You'll probably close the store and retire, if you are over 50, or go on to another lower paying job if you aren't.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

Okay, not facing that grim reality, what you need to do is find out if politicians are more interested in their super sized huge television having a low, low price, or helping you.  And helping you means leveling the playing field with legislation, not "buy local" campaigns.

And I'll note here, the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, which is trying to defend the Wyoming Business Council, is a prime example of people who are there to hurt you.  

And so we begin.

1. Where is his bread buttered?

In other words, how does he make his money.

That may or not may not be a reason to vote for or against somebody.  In Wyoming, fore xample, there are small businessmen in, and opposed to, the Freedom Caucus at the legislature, and voting for the WFC is a complete no go.  So the question is informative, not determinative.

Having said that, there are certain answers that, in my mind, are nearly disqualifying.

One is a near complete lack of private business experience, even as an employee.  Wyoming in particular seems to get a lot of candidates who cite "I was in the military" as a reason to vote for them, based on a lifelong military career.  Well, that isn't like working for a private business at all.  There's never been a time in the history of the U.S. military in which a soldier wasn't going to get paid, save for the government briefly shutting down.  And almost all member of the military don't worry about overhead and payroll expenses.  They also don't have to worry about the country coming to them and saying, "Gee, U.S. Army, we've really liked you here, but the British Army made us a better offer so we're doing to close you down. . . "

It's not just a lifetime of sucking on the government tit that should be concerning.  People who have a lot of family money are in the same category.

I"m not necessary saying don't vote for somebody who is rich.  I am saying you need to weight it carefully.  It's hard to get politicians right now, at least at the national level, who aren't fairly well off, due to the Citizens United case.  But if a person is rich because they inherited it, a pause should be made on the voting lever.

2.  Do you support the American System?

Of course, when you ask this, you're probably going to get the answer of "yes", because it includes the word "American" and nobody wants to be against the American canything if they're a politician.

So you're going to have to ask them some questions or question which shows what they know what the American System is.

They probably won't know.

Henry Clay's "American System," devised in the burst of nationalism that followed the War of 1812, remains one of the most historically significant examples of a government-sponsored program to harmonize and balance the nation's agriculture, commerce, and industry. This "System" consisted of three mutually reinforcing parts: a tariff to protect and promote American industry; a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture. Funds for these subsidies would be obtained from tariffs and sales of public lands. Clay argued that a vigorously maintained system of sectional economic interdependence would eliminate the chance of renewed subservience to the free-trade, laissez-faire "British System."

Okay, right now I'll note that this included tariffs to protect American industry, and I've been hard on those.  I also don't live in the first half of the 19th Century when industry had barely achieved a foothold in the U.S.  And, it might be worth noting, that Clay didn't propose tariffs as people hurt his feelings.  At any rate, post 1890s tariffs have proven to be a disaster.

What I"m noting, however, is the second and third parts of the American System, that being a national bank to foster commerce; and federal subsidies for roads, canals, and other "internal improvements" to develop profitable markets for agriculture.

What I'm really getting at is the use of public funds to assist local businesses.

A good example of the American System in Wyoming has been the Wyoming Business Council..  The carpetbagging Wyoming Freedom Caucus is attacking it basically because it uses public money.  If you are in Wyoming, a good question is whether or not the pol supports the Wyoming Business Council being defunded. If the answer is yes, this pol doesn't care if you evaporate and is instead mindlessly adopting twattle that the WBC is "Socialist".  First of all, I don't care if it is socialist, I only care, and so should you, about whether its effective in generating local businesses.

3. What actual legislation would they support to help local business.

By this, I mean concrete examples.

Chances are, you won't get any, so you'll have to press them.

4.  What is their position on taxation?

By this, I mean the whole smash. Local, state and Federal.

The local press always asks this position of our pols, and they rarely give any kind of a detailed answer.  Right now, most of them note that they aren't fond of taxes, but they don't support the WFC's effort to gut state property taxes either.

That's not specific enough.

5.  What do they think of the out of staters buying up all the ___________and what would they do about it?

Here, and in much ag country, this would pertain to ranch land.  But I'm sure it pertains to other things as well.  Shoot ,around here it also would seem to pertain to tire stores, it's just ridiculous.

Expressing "concern" doesn't mean anything at all, even if you are Lisa Murkowski.  

Doing nothing, I'd note, is an answer.  It's not an answer too many would be willing to give, but at least its an honest answer.

6.  What do their employees, if they have any, think of them?

For some reason, this is never asked, but it should be. If the answer is that the candidates employees hate the candidate with the intensity of a thousand burning suns, that probably needs to be considered.  If, on the other hand, the employees widely admire the employer/candidate, that says something else.

I'll note here that personally I had people come to me as late as the 2010s who had worked for my grandfather and wanted me to know how he had helped them out in tough times.  He never ran for anything, but that says a lot about his character.

I don't think we've heard anything like that from any of Jeffrey Epstein's employees.

I'll also note that as a businessman myself, it seems some businessmen are willing to fire people the second they might have to take a little less home.  That's a character defect that's disturbing, at the least.

7.  Why are they in the party they're in?

Again, an honest answer.  

Right now you can't be a Republican or Democrat and be 100% comfortable with either party.  That would suggest that you are letting others do your thinking for you.  Businessmen have a right to know what drew a candidate to the party, what ever it is.

They also have a right to know what a candidate disagrees with about the positions of their own party.  If he doesn't disagree with any party position, he's an unthinking stooge.

8.  What business related or policy related organizations are they in, or endorsed by?

This is often overlooked unless those organizations step out themselves, which they sometimes do.

Make Liberty Win is, in my view, a big no/go for a candidate. The Club for Growth is as well.  The latter favors an economy that will screw you.

Footnotes

*They really need to be militant about it everywhere, however.

Last edition:

What have you done for me lately? Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 5.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Agrarianism, Agriculture, Climate Change, Distributism, Food, Localism, Politics, Public Lands, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, The land ethic, The second Trump administration

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Don't support liars and don't lie. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 4.

Claiming the mantle of Christ in politics. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 3.

Questions hunters, fishermen, and public lands users need to ask political candidates. Addressing politicians in desperate times, part 2.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing threadLabels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Camping, Climate Change, fishing, hunting, Politics, Public Lands, Questions for politicians, Right Wing Politics and Politicians, The Land Ethic, This is why we can't have nice things

Addressing politicians in desperate times. A series.

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Commentary, Democratic Party, Politics, Questions for politicians, Republican Party, Trailing thread

Labels: 2026 Election, 2028 Election, Agrarianism, Agriculture, Climate 

Lex Anteinternet: We are in big trouble.

Lex Anteinternet: We are in big trouble.:  

We are in big trouble.

 

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work. Three Mirrors.

Lex Anteinternet: Mid Week at Work. Three Mirrors.:  

Mid Week at Work. Three Mirrors.

 This blog, as we occasionally note has the intent . . . to try to explore and learn a few things about the practice of law prior to the current era. That is, prior to the internet, prior to easy roads, and the like. How did it work, how regional was it, how did lawyers perceive their roles, and how were they perceived?

Well, okay, clearly its strayed way beyond that, but it's retained that purpose and is focused on the period from around 1900 until around 1920, which makes a lot other things, indeed most things, off topic.

But this past week there were a collection of things we ran across that really do sort of focus in on that a bit, and given us an example of how things have changed.

Taking them in no particular order, we have the story of baseball player Tommy Brown, about whom we noted:

Seventeen year old Tommy Brown became the youngest player in Major League Baseball to hit a home run.  Brown had joined the Dodgers at age 16.

Brown provides a good glimpse into mid 20th Century America.  Nobody would think it a good thing for a 16 year old to become a professional baseball player now.  Moreover, the next year, when Brown was 18, he was conscripted into the Army, something that likely wouldn't happen now even if conscription existed.  He returned to professional baseball after his service, and played until 1953 and thereafter worked in a Ford plant until he retired, dying this year at age 97.  Clearly baseball, which was America's biggest sport at the time, didn't pay the sort of huge sums it does now.

Tommy "Buckshot" Brown as born on December 6, 1927 and January 15, 2025, and gives us a really good glimpse of the world of the late 1930s and 1940s.  He'd dropped out of school at age 12 in 1939 and went to work with his uncle as a dockworker.  Being a longshoreman is a notoriously dangerous job and frankly the occupation was heavily influenced by the mob at the time.  There's no earthly way that you could be hired as a longshoreman at age 12 now, nor should there be.  But life was like that then.  My father's father, who was born in 1907, I think, went to work at age 13.  

People did that.

If you are a longshoreman at age 12, you are a 12 year old adult.

He must have been a good baseball player to be hired on in the Majors at age 16.  If that happened now, you'd have to be one of the greatest players alive in the game. But this was during World War Two, and baseball was scraping.

It was scraping as the military was.  The service had taken pretty much all the able bodied men who weren't in a critical war industry.  We don't like to think this about "the Greatest Generation" now, but by 1944 and 1945, the Army was inducting me who were only marginally capable of being soldiers in normal times.  Men who were legally blind in one eye and who were psychotic were being taken in, and I'm not exaggerating.  The recent incident we reported here of a soldier going mad and killing Japanese POWs makes sense in this context.  It's relatively hard to get into the Army now.  After World War Two men inducted were in good physical and mental shape.  By the last days of the Second World War not all were and we knew it.

Brown's story also tells us a lot about what economic life was like mid century.  Obviously, baseball didn't make Brown rich, and there was no post baseball career associated with sports.  He went to work in a factory.

Going to work in a factory, in the 50s, was a pretty solid American job, and another story we touched on relates to this.

The US War Production Board removed most of its controls over manufacturing activity, setting the stage for a post war economic boom.

The US standard of living had actually increased during the war, which is not entirely surprising given that the US economy had effectively stagnated in 1929, and the US was the only major industrial power other than Canada whose industrial base hadn't been severely damaged during the war.  Ever since the war, Americans have been proud of the economics of the post war era, failing to appreciate that if every major city on two continents is bombed or otherwise destroyed, and yours aren't, your going to succeed.

Having said that, the Truman Administration's rapid normalization of the economy was very smart.  The British failed to do that to their detriment.

Americans of our age, and indeed since the 1950s, have really convinced themselves that American Ingenuity and native smartness caused us to have the best economy in the world in the third quarter of the 20th Century, and that if only we returned to the conditions of the 50s, we would again.

Well, the conditions of the 1950s were a lot like the conditions of the post war 1940s.  Every major city in the world, save for American and Canadian ones, had been damaged, and many had been bombed flat.   It's not as if Stuttgart, Stalingrad, or Osaka were in good shape.  We would have had to nearly intentionally mess up not to be the world's dominant economy and that went on all the way into the 1970s.  The UK did not really recover from World War Two, in part due to bad economic decisions, until the 1960s.  West Germany, ironically, recovered much quicker, but in no small part due to the return of refugee German economists who intentionally ignored American economic advice.  Japan emerged from the devastation in the 70s.  Italy really started to in the 60s.  

Many of these countries, when they did, emerged with brand new economies as things were brand new.  Japan is a good example, but then so is Italy, which had been a shockingly backwater dump until the mid 50s.

Russia, arguably, has never recovered, helping to explain its national paranoia.

The thing is, however, that the myth as been hugely damaging to Americans, who imagine that if we were only whiter and had "less regulation", etc., we'd be back in 1955.  It's not going to happen, and we can't tariff our way back to the Eisenhower Era.

Of course, a lot of that post war era wasn't all that nifty. We had the Cold War, for example, and we often dealt with significant inflation, in no small part to inflate our way out of enormous Cold War defense budgets. . .which is probably a warning of what's to come when we realize we have to do something about the national debt.

Finally, we had posted on women and careers.  Well, sort of.  Anyhow, right after that we saw a Twitter post in which a young woman who posted on TikTok was being discussed for say:

I'm just so tired of living and working and doing this every single day, and having nothing — I don't know how I'm gonna get childcare when I have to work 40 hours a week because I can't even afford to feed my family as is.  I'm having medical problems. I can't even get into the doctor because X rays and MRIs are 500, let alone a colonoscopy and endoscopy that I need. Like, I can't afford anything. My doctors cancel my appointments.

This world is just not meant to be like this, we need to make change for us, for each other. Please.

She's right.

This was under the heading, on her post, of "This world is a scam".

The world?  Well, that's a little too broad.  But the modernized industrialized Protestant work ethic world of the West?  You bet.

Interestingly, one of the things she took flak for was buying some sort of baby bottle washer.  It's been a long time since there were infants here, but when there were, I recall we tended to use sort of a disposable system, not real bottles.  Having said that, I looked bottles up, and I can recall that we had some of the ones that are still offered, so I'm likely wrong.  Anyhow, washing bottles is no doubt a pain.

The irate people, who are probably generally irate simply because she had children, and therefore is not fully lashed to the deck of the economic fraud everyone is participating in, seemed to think that this therefore meant she was rich.  Not hardly.

FWIW, I looked up baby bottle washers too, and they really aren't that expensive.  They no doubt probably save time.  Time is money and of course we need to get those wimmen's out in the workplace where they can serve the machine.

Women only entered the workplace at this level in the first place after domestic machinery freed, or seperated, their labor from the house, where it had previously been necessary.  You don't see women being criticized because their house contains a vacuum cleaner, or a dishwasher, even though this is not intrinsically different.  

Indeed, this tends to be the one area where the right and the left are in agreement, and will yell about how society needs more baby warehouses, um daycares.  The left, of course, goes further and discourages having children at all, and would indeed expand infanticide if it could, one of the issues that gave rise to the culture was and the populist revolve that we're still in.  

At any rate, she's right.  The world is not meant to be like this. We made this horror, and others.  We can fix it.

Lex Anteinternet: Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling...

Lex Anteinternet: Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling...: 

Occupational Identity and authenticity, a rambling thread.

Occupational identity refers to the conscious awareness of oneself as a worker. The process of occupational identity formation in modern societies can be difficult and stressful. However, establishing a strong, self-chosen, positive, and flexible occupational identity appears to be an important contributor to occupational success, social adaptation, and psychological well-being. Whereas previous research has demonstrated that the strength and clarity of occupational identity are major determinants of career decision-making and psychosocial adjustment, more attention needs to be paid to its structure and contents. We describe the structure of occupational identity using an extended identity status model, which includes the traditional constructs of moratorium and foreclosure, but also differentiates between identity diffusion and identity confusion as well as between static and dynamic identity achievement. Dynamic identity achievement appears to be the most adaptive occupational identity status, whereas confusion may be particularly problematic. We represent the contents of occupational identity via a theoretical taxonomy of general orientations toward work (Job, Social Ladder, Calling, and Career) determined by the prevailing work motivation (extrinsic vs. intrinsic) and preferred career dynamics (stability vs. growth). There is evidence that perception of work as a calling is associated with positive mental health, whereas perception of work as a career can be highly beneficial in terms of occupational success and satisfaction. We conclude that further research is needed on the structure and contents of occupational identity and we note that there is also an urgent need to address the issues of cross-cultural differences and intervention that have not received sufficient attention in previous research. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)

Skorikov, V. B., & Vondracek, F. W. (2011). Occupational identity. In S. J. Schwartz, K. Luyckx, & V. L. Vignoles (Eds.), Handbook of identity theory and research.

How some lawyers apparently want the public to imagine them.

A number of relatively recent experiences has lead me to post this thread.

Posted around town are some billboards by a lawyer who is apparently specializing in plaintiffs' cases and criminal defense.  I don't know him well, but I do know  him.

When I first met him, he came across, quite frankly, as a metrosexual.  I was quite surprised later on when I learned that he'd grown up on a ranch, and that he had a brother who now ran it.  Now, however, he appears on billboards with a huge mustache in Western attire and saddle and portrays himself as a cowboy.

And I guess, by cowboy, I mean both real cowboys and the movie image of a cowboy.

Cowboys, and that is of course a real occupation, have been a popular cultural image since the late 19th Century.  It's really interesting to me, as somebody who is a stockman and who has, accordingly, done a fair amount of cowboying, how cowboys continue to have a sort of wild image that they acquired in that time period.  I love working stock, but most of it isn't anything like what movies portray.  Maybe none of is, which is why  the popular Yellowstone television show tends to anger me.

Of course, being a lawyer isn't anything like portrayed on television either.

Anyhow, I never tell people that "I'm a cowboy", but I find that I"m referred to that way, in the working sense of the word, from time to time.  Or, people will refer to me as a rancher the same way from time to time.  I'm always a bit flattered when they do, as if I'd had my ruthers in the world, which I haven't, that's what I would have done full time.  I can't say its my occupational identity, however, as I'm well aware that I don't do it full time.

Affecting the image, however, miffs me.  It's fake.  If you simply come across that way, as you are naturally that way, that's one thing.  Using it to promote your legal career, however, is bullshit.

Indeed, on real cowboys, not all of which are men, today:

Come As You Are

I guess this gets back in a way to this thread:

A Nation of Slobs. But then. . .

If you are going to be a lawyer, look like one, it's what you actually are.

And, by the way, there's at least one politician in the state that does the same thing, and I'd have the same criticism about.  He's not a lawyer, but a commercial landlord.  

Anyhow, it also gets to the weird association that the law picked up at some point with cowboys around here.  I don't know when this occurred, but it might have been about the time that Gerry Spence's book Gunning for Justice came out.  Spence didn't try to portray himself as a cowboy, but he did take on a Western influenced style, wearing a fringed jacket and a cowboy hat as a matter of course.  Spence being sui generis has been able to consistently pull that off whereas those copying him tend to look absurd.

Anyhow, "Gunning for Justice" is actually a phrase that's been around for awhile and he didn't introduce it, as t his movie poster from 1948 demonstrates:

Spence's use of it, however, seem to have pushed into another sort of use, at least locally.

On this, it's interesting that the cowboy image can be coopted this way, whereas other "manly" professions genuinely cannot.  Fighters (boxers) have been a little bit, and I suppose that was an obviously one, but nobody, for example, talks about "whaling for justice".

Anyhow, dressing up like a cowboy for affect if you are not punching makes you a Rexall Ranger, not a cowboy.

While I'm at it, a Wyoming lawyer has affected the cowboy appearance for her columns on one of the local electronic journals.  In this case, she's gone for the a way too big hat big pushed way up on the forehead so you can see the face look, which to a working stockman looks absolutely absurd.  The same journal actually as a working rancher who wears his hat correctly as a columnist, and up until recently had another who did the same.

As a total side, if you notice in old cowboy portraits they often have their hats pushed to the back of their head, something moderns have wondered about, and for which they've even assumed that must be how they wore them.

No, the cameras were bad.

Isom Dart at Brown’s Hole Wyoming.

If they hadn't pushed them up some, their faces would have been in shadow

On identifies, I had a couple of odd encounters recently, one of which involves mental decline, and the other which involves gender attraction.

I'll start with the latter one first.  There's an older profession that I don't know well, but who've I've been familiar with for a very long time.  Somebody much more familiar with him than me dropped that he's a homosexual.  I was shocked.  Not because homosexuality in general shocks me, but because it was very well closeted for decades.  Indeed, he's married with children.

I suppose that might be the rule for people north of 70, the closteting, that is.

In retrospect, it pretty quickly made sense for some reason.  It just explained some personality quirks that I'd long noticed.  The point of posting it here, however, is that if it's true, he's lived a lifetime with sort of an interesting strained identity.

He's not the only one I know of who is alleged to be in this category.  Frankly a fairly well known person in the region is claimed by some insiders to fit this as well.  In that case, it's more notable for his public opinions on things, which would be generally contrary to this inclination, assuming its true.

Now, I'll note that I have the typically misunderstood Catholic views on homosexuality.  I'll also note that one of these individuals is a co-religious, and the other was.  My only real point in noting all of this is to note that it must be a strain to live an entire life with a sort of false identity, assuming that its true in either case, which I can't really say for sure.

I'll also note that homosexuals of that vintage who did not present themselves as "gay", which is different, may have had a better understanding of marriage than many.  Catholic Answers Hugh Barbour defined marriage as a union between a man and a woman to produce children for the worship of God, which while it may be more than that, that captures a lot of it.  People like to say that before Obergefell homosexuals couldn't marry, but that's simply false, if we consider that marriage is a unique institution between two people capable of reproducing and bound to care for those they create.

Going on to occupations, I've also run across recently a situation in which I've been dealing with somebody whom, once again, I don't know that well but who is still working fulltime and whose clearly suffering from some compression loss in the psychological cylinders.  I'm not their pal or anything but it's sad to watch.  It's also sad to watch, however, somebody whose psychological identify is so closely identified with the practice of law, they can't leave it.

I've known more than one lawyer who practiced into advanced old age with no mental detriment.  But it's also the case quite frankly that a person's physical clockworks, and often their mental ones, start to slip a bit after the hands hit 60 or so.  I'm frankly not convinced at all that allowing people to practice a profession after some point in their 60s is a good thing, and I don't think people should carry on into their 70s.  For one thing, it's just sad.  Surely there was something else that interested them once.

Back to occupational identities.

One of the really minor features of this blog is the M65 Field Jackets in the wild. page.  Minor.

I like M65 field jackets.  When I was in the Guard I had at least six of them due to having bought two and having been issued four more.  The reason I was issued four is that at Ft. Sill the switch from OG-107 to BDU was going on and we were issued OD field jackets. As soon as I got back, we were issued BDU field jackets, and told to keep the old ones.

I gave one of the OD ones to a girlfriend who had need of a jacket while I was in university, and then eventually I just got to big, i.e,. gained weight, or filled out, whatever, and couldn't wear the size I'd been issued.  But I still had the next larger size, Large Regular.

Well, time, etc.

A surplus store here had a whole bunch of uniform items here before they went out of business and I bought several BDU ones.  I just really like them.  I picked up a OD one for my son, as they're a nice coat, but naively didn't for myself.  The OD ones you can wear for daily wear really.

Well, here recently I found a Greek Lizard pattern one for sale and I bought it for hunting.  Which meant that I had three woodland pattern ones, one desert pattern one (a gift of an old soldier) and a Lizard pattern one.  Then I saw the current multicam pattern one for sale on Ebay, which I ordered.  Finally, I decided I needed an OD one and bought one of those off of ebay.

Some of these have the US Army tape on them.  One, the multicam one, came with paratrooper wings from the former and his name tape.  I took the name tape off and the paratrooper wings.  I'm not a paratrooper.  The OD one came with a name tape, the U.S. Army tape, and two unit patches.  I took everything off but the US Army tape.

For reasons that are silly, and I can't explain, I ended up ordering name tapes.  I can now sew those on.

Why?  I'm not sure.  I don't need name tapes on old uniform items for any rational reason.  Rather, I was required to do it back in the day, and I still feel like am now.  Indeed, it would make a lot more sense to take the US Army patch off the OD one so I can use it for its intended purpose of regular daily wear.

Odd

Well, I found a M1943 replica on sale and ordered it.  It won't have any patches.

I need to stop buying them.

As a further aside, a Carhartt coat is much warmer.  My old one is pretty much blown out now.  It was a gift from my wife and I've been resisting getting a new one, even though I need to.  Guess I'm hoping for another one as a gift so that I don't have to buy it.

Back to occupational identities for a moment.  It occured to me how, when I was young, men had much less of one. They genuinely seemed more well rounded than men do today

People always like to claim things were different, if not outright perfect, when they were young.  But it does seem to me that genuinely men were quite family oriented. That meant that their professions and occupations were focused on providing for their families, but it also meant that their professions tended not to be all that they were, including to themselves.  I can vaguely recall some men who were very career oriented being criticized for it.

Every man that I knew when I was young tended to almost be identified by a collection of interests.  Medical professionals were often hunters and fishermen.  Indeed, I don't know one who wasn't.  Some were dramatically so.  Men who had come into professions from farms and ranches tended to still be identified with their origin and retain some contacts with that life.  I knew a fireman who was a pretty good amature geologist, another who was a car restorer, and another who was the first long distance runner I ever knew.  More recently professionals, or at least lawyers, have almost become cartoons of themselves in some instances, only engaging in the law or perhaps one activity that's sort of socially approved for lawyers.

It isn't good.

Last Sunday I ran this item:

Pack Animals - the 🇩🇪 German Mountain Infantry Brigade

I knew that the Bundesheer has a mountain infantry brigade.

I've sometimes thought that if I had been born in Germany, which I'm very much glad I was not, I'd have opted for a career with this unit.  Outdoors. . . animals, etc.  By the same token, if I had been born French, there's the Chasseurs Alpins.

Hmmm. . . 

Well, I didn't opt for a career with the Wyoming Game & Fish, so I'm probably just fooling myself.

Have a nice day at work.  

Mehr Mensch sein,

Lex Anteinternet: Work with meaning and the meaning of work.

Lex Anteinternet: Work with meaning and the meaning of work.: 

Work with meaning and the meaning of work.

You see, in this world there's two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.

Blondie, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

I have a theory that certain work is existential by nature.  My post on that from several months ago:

A conversation with an old friend. The Good Death, and the Good Life and Existential Occupations.

Why do I note this?

Well I've had a bunch of synchronicitous events happen recently that perhaps demand it being noted, assuming that anything must be noted here at all.  Because they're all sort of circular, I'll start in one spot and gather the round corral, noting that these recollections are all recent, but not chronological.

I was walking out of the sporting goods store and ran into a law school colleague.  For some reason or another, for much of my life, I've always been the youngest person in a group as a rule, even when I really shouldn't have been.  Anyhow, this fellow, like two other of my law school friends, was an older law student, in law school, although I'm not sure how old he really was then,  Two of my other friends, both Vietnam War era veterans, were in their 40s, so they're in their mid 70s now.  I think this fellow was probably in his mid to late 30s.  He remained remarkably the same looking all that time.

He kind of bounced around at first as a lawyer before landing in a firm where he practiced for maybe 20 years.  He's retired now, and has been for awhile.  He asked me if I was getting ready to retire, which I indicated I wasn't, but I did ask him about the process, and he gave me some details of how he'd gone about it.  

Good to know from somebody who has done it.

He doesn't miss practicing at all.

In contrast to this, a close friend of mine, well really a relative, who is a lawyer who must be crowding 70 told me the other day he's not going to.  He'd miss the collegiality of being a lawyer.

That answer shocked me.  Not that he wasn't going to retire, but the collegiality.

Eh?

It may be just me, but only a handful of my friends are lawyers.  I do have some lawyer friends.  But most of my friends aren't lawyers and never have been.  I wouldn't miss most lawyers whatsoever.  Indeed, I miss a lot of my genuinely close friends due to the practice of law.

This, frankly, is probably an exception to the rule.  Law is a unique profession, litigation with in the law even more so, and by and large the onliy people who have a grasp on what it is like are other lawyers.  It is, I suppose, kind of like being a combat veteran that way.  Lawyers hang out with other lawyers as they're lawyers.  

Indeed, being heavily introverted, I've often noted how much lawyers enjoy professional gatherings. They really do.  There are organizations that we're all part of and we'll go to a conference and there will be a big dinner or something, everyone goes.

Unless my spouse is with me, or one of the few lawyers I really know well and like, I tend to avoid those gatherings.

Anyhow this takes me to a second point.

I know a couple of lawyers who have lost their souls.

I don't mean in a metaphysical sense.  That is, I'm not saying they're condemned to Hell.  What I'm saying is that their personalities are gone and been absorbed by false ones in the pursuit of nothing more than money.

It happens to people.  It's not a pleasant thing to see.  

I was never friends with either of the ones I have in mind.  Interestingly, however, one seems to be trying to emerge.  One, who sank into this a long time ago actually started talking to me the other day about what he was going to do "next", something he's never said before.

A really good lawyer friend of mine is mostly retired.  Like the fellow I mentioned above, while he had his doubts, he hasn't missed the practice at all.

Another good lawyer friend of mine, a woman, is trying to transition from one practice to another.

Two women I know otherwise recently lost their jobs. They weren't lawyers.

I note that as I think women in particular are subject to the Capitalist lie that careers are existentially defining, a completely modern notion.

St Paul was a tent maker.  St. Peter a fisherman.  I don't know if there are any classic Medieval or Renaissance paintings of St. Paul making a tent, but there should be.

Why do I note that?

Well, for this reason.  You don't think much about St. Paul being a tent maker as his occupation didn't define him.  His sainthood did.  

But a lot of us moderns sure have made our occupations define us.  And women are very much doing so now.

This takes me back to the item I linked in above.

In this case, unlike my uncle, he was much younger.  My age, in fact.  I hadn't seen him for many years, and before his troubles really set in.  He hadn't been able to adjust to them well.  The most common comment from people, none of whom were surprised, was that his torment was over.

I don't have any big plans, like one of my friends, for retirement.  I hope to be healthy, and just become more of an agrarian-killetarian than I presently am.  Funny thing is that recently I've been running into people who claim "you're looking really good". Somebody asked me the other day, indeed at the funeral gathering, "you're working out", the question in the form of a statement.  Not really.

Indeed, I've gained some weight I seemingly just can't lose, which I think is the byproduct of my thyroid medicine, which has made me hungry, and I know that I'm not in the physical condition I was before my recent health troubles commenced.  People close to me just won't accept that, which brings me to the other side of the retirement coin noted above.  Some lawyers I know are already planning for me to work into my 70s, as that's the thing to do, apparently. Long-suffering spouse, for her part, won't say something like that, but from an ag family, she doesn't really accept the concept of retirement anyhow.  Having said that, I wouldn't plan on my retiring from the ag operation either.

It finally occured to me, however, what's different about agricultural jobs as opposed to others, at least if you are an owner of the enterprise or part of it.  The occupation itself is existentially human.  It is, if you will, an Existential Occupation, or at least it is right now. The mindless gerbil like advance of "progress" may ruin that and reduce it to just another occupation.

Existential Occupations are ones that run with our DNA as a species.  Being a farmer/herdsman is almost as deep in us as being a hunter or fisherman, and it stems from the same root in our being.  It's that reason, really, that people who no longer have to go to the field and stream for protein, still do, and it's the reason that people who can buy frozen Brussels sprouts at Riddleys' still grown them on their lots.  And its the reason that people who have never been around livestock will feel, after they get a small lot, that they need a cow, a goat, or chickens.  It's in us.  That's why people don't retire from real agriculture.

It's not the only occupation of that type, we might note.  Clerics are in that category.  Storytellers and Historians are as well.  We've worshiped the Devine since our onset as a species, and we've told stories and kept our history as story the entire time.  They're all existential in nature.  Those who build certain things probably fit into that category as well, as we've always done that.  The fact that people tinker with machinery as a hobby would suggest that it's like that as well.

Indeed, if it's an occupation. . . and also a hobby, that's a good clue that its an Existential Occupation.

If I were to retire from my career, which I can't right now, I wouldn't be one of those people who spend their time traveling to Rome or Paris or wherever.  I have very low interest in doing that.  I'd spend my time writing, fishing, hunting, gardening (and livestock tending).  That probably sounds pretty dull to most people.  I could imagine myself checking our Iceland or Ireland, or fjords in Norway, but I likely never will.

That's more than I really need for my point here, but it ties in, this way.

Most careers are just jobs. They're an industrial way of separating you from your homes to make money for somebody else, in exchange for which you make some money too.  This was done to men first, and then with the "women's liberation" movement of the 1960s, women drank the KookAide and have been wondering when the good feels will arrive.

They won't.

Most jobs have no greater existential meaning than that.  If you define yourself by them, you are defining yourself as a fiction.

Which is why I worry about the lawyers who collapse into the cartoonish litigation personality.  It makes you a cartoon, and not a very interesting one.

It's also why lawyers who become deep dive into the Whaling For Justice personality, or something like it, sort of boil off the people they were and become somebody nobody is interested in.

And I also think that's why old lawyers have a hard time retiring.  After selling your life away, is this it?  It must be. This must be it.  I must love this as otherwise. . . .

I will note, and strongly, that I'm not advocating here for something that seems to be a current rage.  Don't get any post high school education and hope for the best.

Indeed, the advocates of that, don't mean that.  They mean don't forget to look at occupations where you work with your hands.

Now listen to me, all of you. You are all condemned men. We keep you alive to serve this ship. So row well, and live.

Quintus Arrius, Ben Hur.

The truth of the matter is that we sell our lives for a living, but we shouldn't sell our souls.  A lot of career propaganda emphasis the nifty life you are supposed to have, but not the risk of losing your soul, and here I mean in both senses.  Being able to sell the minutes of your life away for a decent return means that you need to have skills of some sort that are valuable.  People should try to acquire those if for nothing else their own protection.

Women, I'd note, are particularly vulnerable here.  A woman with a professional degree, such as law, is armed against loss of employer.  A woman who doesn't have some sort of valuable skill is at the mercy of her employer.  They're the ones who lose their jobs readily, and who are subject to all sorts of risks.  

The trick, I guess, is to get those skills and remember that we shouldn't lose who we are.

One group of people who tend to make that career choice are people who work for the government. They're often grossly underpaid, but they also tend to have weighted the options and elected towards "quality of life".  Lawyers who work for the AG's office, or biologists who work for state and Federal agencies provide such examples.  

Interestingly, people on the outside in the same fields tend to hold these people in contempt.  I guess people working 80 hours a week to make a go of it are naturally resentful towards those who do not.  But those people are often very dedicated to their professions and even more purist than those who sell their labor in the private market.  A dear cousin of mine who recently died was one such example.  She was a research biologist at a university.  

We're about to head into a Federal administration here that seems to contain a contempt to government employees.  Indeed one recent campaign featured somebody who wants to limit the amount of time you can work for the Federal government.  The same campaign repeatedly noted the candidates rural roots.

The rural roots are real, but what an irony.  Descending from homesteaders means that you descent from the biggest American welfare program ever, one that used the U.S. Army to violently expel land occupants due to their race, to hand it out to European Americans.  Don't mistake my point, I love agriculture and regard it as an existential occupation, and if I'd been alive when you could have homesteaded, I would have.  But people who loved the land so much they fought for it, and lost, had the moral high ground on that, and those who came in behind them benefitted from the Federal largess and murder.

If you work for a living, why do you kill yourself working?

Tuco, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.

Genesis tells us that since we sinned in the Garden, we've condemned ourselves to work.  But it's also obvious that work was always part of the plan.  It's interesting how well this comports to how evolution and societal development worked.  We were likely a very happy group as aboriginals, and we know now that depression and modern angst is unknown in hunter gatherer societies.  But we ate from the tree of knowledge and acquired it, 

Well, now we have to work.  Make the best of it.