Saturday, October 17, 2026
Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Lex Anteinternet: The 2026 Election, 25th Edition. The casting the vote edition
The 2026 Election, 25th Edition. The casting the vote edition.
I have now voted.
October 13, 2026.
I went down to the old county courthouse and caste my votes. I've now weighed in for 2026.
In some ways, it wasn't easy for me. I knew who I wanted to vote for, but I was a bit tortured between not voting for Chuck Gray and Harriet Hageman and leaving my ballot blank, or for casting a vote for one of their opponents.
I did the latter.
The situation facing the country is just too dire. We are, effectively, in the 1932 German election where the choices are boiling down to a desperate few. Or, perhaps, we're in the June and November 1946 French election where the Catholic Christian Democrats were in a coalition with the Communists, which shows how dire the situation was in the Fourth Republic. The choice now is to vote against a rising force of bloody fascism and acknowledge that the opponents retain some real taints, or to allow the country to do down the Via dei Fori Imperiali.
It's that dire.
The last few days made up my mind for me. A government that makes an open spectacle of execution and then sides with Vladimir Putin.
I'm not going there, and I cannot tolerate going there.
Nien, Non, No.
In two years I'll reassess. Chances are that at least one of the candidates I voted for I won't vote for again.
So, how did I vote?
Let's look at the state elections, that was easy.
Governor:1
Eric Barlow. He's the only real choice, and he's a good one. Rebecca Bextel thinks she's a conservative, but she's a Dixiecrat through and through. She needs to go home to Sweet Home Alabama, where she is literally from. Kenneth Casner is an overdone, baked in the sun, left out to dry, joke of a candidate. He symbolizes the pathetic state the Wyoming Democratic Party is in. The Democrats used to have some fine candidates, and it wasn't all that long ago that they were in the Governor's chair. Casner? Give me a break.
Barlow's election will be the death of the Wyoming Freedom Caucus, whose Bittereinders are already retreating to the Constitution Party Redoubt.
Good riddance to them.
So, here, I voted for a straight Republican ticket.
The other state races.
Other than Governor, we had a host of uncontested or barely contested races in which incumbents sought reelection. Fortunately for all of us, they are all really good candidates.
The one contested one is Superintendent of Public Instruction. In that race Ana Cordova, a Democrat, contests with Steve Harshman, a Republican.
There's' no doubt that Harshman, an local educator of long and respected standing, is an excellent choice. Still, I thought about voting for Cordova, a young educator with an impressive background. Harshman is 62 or 63, Cordova much younger. I suspect that Harshman might look at running for Governor, but he'll be 72 years old at least before he can, given that Barlow will win two terms.
Again, here, on state races, I voted a straight Republican ticket.
The property tax initiatives
There is a Freedom Caucus ballot initiative to cut residential property taxes in half, which benefits the carpetbagger class. It would but local governments like a fish, but hey, hey, the carpetbaggers have already educated their children and live behind walls, so they'll be okay.
I actually had a county commissioner explain this one to me in detail. Rank and file property owners voting for it, given the other deductions a property owner is eligible for, are screwing themselves.
I voted against it.
Frankly, I'd impose a tax, if I could, on the property of the carpetbaggers, which drives up property values for anyone else. Raise your kids in California? Well, you weren't here while we were enduring the ups and downs of the Wyoming economy and now you can pay for it. Stay in California if you don't like it. Even if you do, stay in CAlifornia.
Anyway you look at it, I'm not for giving the Bextels and Biens an advantage in taxes at our expense.
Representation in Washington D.C.
It was this set of choices that were difficult for me.
There was never any question that I would never vote for Chuck Gray. I never have, and I never will. Chuck needs to go back to Los Angeles and work for a good twenty years at a convenience store in Watts so he knows who real people are. Likewise, there was never any question I'd vote for my law school near contemporary Harriet Hageman, whose evolution from farm girl, polo shirt wearing, cute student to dressed in black lawyer for the rich and powerful is a disappointing memory of a very long career.
She didn't have to turn out like this. If she'd gone to work for one of the real civil firms in the state, she would not have.
No, the question was whether I'd vote for Kinney, Johnson, or Byrd or nobody at all.
In the end, given the dire situation, I voted for the Democratic candidates.
Now, I'll note that I think Byrd is an excellent candidate. Better than Hageman in every way, save perhaps for two ways.
Gray symbolizes everything wrong with the GOP in Wyoming except that instead of being a carpetbagger from the Confederacy, he's a carpetbagger from Los Angeles, and a pathetic one. California conservatism was real conservatism. Gray's father was an admirer of Reagan, not Strom Thurmond. Gray is an example of how Sun Yat-Sen tragically gave us Mao Tse-Tung. A movement gone preversely wrong, although Reagan's embrace of the fowl Dixiecrats made that predictable. And Gray, about whom we know very little, is still young enough that he can be forced into evading the fate of Donald Trump, a rich kid who publicly putrefies to the detriment of us all.
Gray's only platform is that he loves Donald Trump more than Trump loves Trump, that he's a latter day opponent of wind energy, for what appears to be opportunistic, and that as a 36 year old man whose not married and not known to have a publicly acknowledged interest in any identified female, he's opposed to transvestites in women's sports.
Seems like populist bullshit.
Gray would support Trump in anything, which in the next two years is going to be extremely dangerous. I could not vote for him.
Which left me voting for Kinney.
Kinney is a moderate left Democrat, and I'm not. I'm sure she's for "choice" or "reproductive rights', which infanticide, and I am not. I suspect this would be Byrd's position as well Should she be elected, in two years I'm voting for whichever rational Republican emerges. If a better GOP candidate emerges for the Senate, abortion would be my defining issue there as well, in six years. The next two years are the key, however. The Democrats are going to take the House and its necessary they do so. Giving Chuck Gray a titanic dope slap, or better yet send him crying in his knee pants back to Los Angeles, is necessary.
As for the Hageman/Byrd contest, Byrd would make a really good Senator. If the Democrats take the Senate, we couldn't be better represented. He has the same, I assume, pro choice problem, but my guess is that isn't deep with Byrd, but I base that on nothing other than instinct. He would be a real voice for Wyoming and we're going to need one, should the Democrats take the Senate, and leave John Barrasso wandering around the halls of Congress giving deep stares at John Thune, or whomever.
Do I think the Democrats can take these races? Frankly, no. But if they do well, that sends a message to at least Hageman, who probably would moderate her positions. Gray, if elected, will face a challenger in 2028 and be sent packing.
So here I voted a straight Democratic ticket.
The local races
I haven't said much about these.
My City of Casper ward race featured a guy with a business background facing a young women with fishing tackle on her face. I'm not voting for fishing tackle.
The county commission race featured one incumbent, Dallas Laird, one former commissioner who was later assessor, who was not great in either role, Matt Keating, one former Casper mayor, Ray Pacheco, one Evansville former mayor, Candace Machado, and somebody else.
I had to vote for three.
I voted for Keating, Pacheco, and Machado. Two Republicans and one Democrat.
On this race, I frankly voted against Laird, who is as old as dirt. He's been in local politics since Sitting Bull was in grammar school and it was time for him to go. Besides, he came into office promising to do something about the county selling the hospital to Banner health, which was by then impossible to do anything about, and he didn't do anything about it. He never could have, once something is sold, it's sold. As a lawyer, he knew that, or should have known that.
I'm not keen on that sort of misrepresentation.
Pacheco I have reservations about, but he tries to please people in the best way, so I'm okay with him.
Machado is a gadfly, but down at the county, which is sort of a geezer reservoir in transition, I figure that might be a good thing.
Governor Gordon wrote an op ed opposing the property tax initiative.
(OPINION) Why passing Prop. 1 would have a devastating impact on Wyoming
As noted, I voted against this initiative which would have the impact of mostly benefitting people with really high dollar residences.
This entire cutting property tax movement strongly resembles something that was done in California some decades ago and really hurt it. It's notable that it's strong in the Freedom Caucus camp, which is heavily populated by carpetbaggers. They don't have the same connections to their communities that real Wyomingites do. A prime mover in the initiative was failed Gubernatorial candidate Brent Bien whom, as we've noted, spent most of his adult life sucking on the Federal Government's tit which means he didn't have to worry about local services and education like the rest of us did and do. The element of Solidarity seems to be completely lacking in the populist far right
And that, frankly, is not a very Wyomingite or Western way of looking at things.
Footnotes:
1. As always, I'm going with the conventional color conventions. Blue is conservative, red left of center. This is how it is the world over.
Orange, well I used that for a distributist sort of view. It's the color of Christian Democracy.
Last edition.
The 2026 Election, 24th Edition. Voting for Gray and Hageman is morally unconscionable. So what to do?
Labels: 1860 Election, 2020s, 2026, 2026 Election, Catholic, Christianity, Chuck Gray, Conservatism, Cornell Rape, Eric Barlow, Harriet Hageman, James Byrd, Kenneth Casner, Kristallnacht, Lisa Kinney, Populism, Rebecca Bextel, religionLex Anteinternet: Sunday, October 13, 1946. Death of Vinegar Joe Stillwell, Horrific crime in Casper, The Price of Meat, French Fourth Republic.
Lex Anteinternet: The 2026 Election, 24th Edition. Voting for Gray and Hageman is morally unconscionable. So what to do?
The 2026 Election, 24th Edition. Voting for Gray and Hageman is morally unconscionable. So what to do?
Kristallnacht in 1938. A lot of people who had voted for the Nazis had been stampeded there by the assertion that it was the Nazis or the Communists, both of which were populist parties. The smiling couple probably wasn't smiling by 1945, assuming that they were both alive.
The first rule of logic: Chesterton's Fence:
There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it."The second rule of logic: Hanlon's Razor
Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.
It's tempting to say that this will be an election like no other, and indeed, I think it is in many ways. In terms of American elections, it's the most important election, even though it's a midterm election, since the the Election of 1860. It's the election that will determine if Trump continues to rule as an insane dictator, or if the nation can begin to turn the path towards constitutional democracy.1
Things like this make this a critical election:

On the Cornell rapes:
Letitia James is a corrupt person…And I feel badly for whoever she's looking at because they won’t get a fair shake.
He later called James a "dog".
I'm an actual conservative. I am not a populist. Conservatives believe that man if flawed and that we should be careful to conserve things that have worked or are part of culture until we know what the reason for casting it aside would really be.
The sixth rule of logic: Yeoman's Gate:
Before you go through a gate to get to the other side of a fence, completely figure out, to the extent you can, where the path goes.
Conservatives believe that man is fallen and that our natures and the nature of the world, in its pure form, is dictated by an outside existential, that being God to most conservatives, and nature to some. We don't cast away easily, and we believe the Natural Law ultimately controls most things.
Conservatism has been killed by Donald Trump.
The most significant force around Trump is that of populism. Populism believes that the "will of the people" is endowed with some sort of magic virtue. The question is, who are the people? It's never all the people. Populists always regard themselves as "the people" and other people as the enemy of the people. They're easily lead by demagogues At one time they followed Bernie Sanders around like puppies, now they follow Donald Trump. The besotted populists believe that the will of the people is magically transmitted to Trump who is always right.
Trump is a dangerously sick man.
Trump has never been an admirable one. We could go into it, but people who claim he's "Godly" are rank idiots. Indeed, a significant portion of Trump supporters at this point are the absolute bottom of the bell curve. He's deeply immoral and is committing the United States to deeply immoral acts. Fortunately, the bloom is off the rose at this point, and it appears highly likely that the GOP, which has fallen down on its duties in Congress, will be tossed out. Due to weirdness of Trump's cabinet, we'll have to endure Trump for two more years, probably.
The problem for real conservatives, however, and particularly for Catholics, or indeed for Catholics whether they are conservative or not, is how to vote.
In the Catholic Tradition, responsible citizenship is a virtue, and participation in political life is a moral obligation.
Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship, No. 13.
In Wyoming, some of the choices will be easy. Eric Barlow, the Republican, is the easy choice over Democrat Ken Casner or Dixiecrat Rebecca Bextel. It's not even close. Effectively, the races for Governor, Secretary of State, and Superintendent of Public Education are over, and will all go to good Republican candidates.
But the candidates for the House and Senate are a nightmare.
Chuck Gray is a co-religious about whom the public knows nothing. A far right right winger born with a silver spoon in his mouth he washed up in Wyoming as his daddy, who doesn't live here, has a radio station here. He barely won the primary for Secretary of State, after having been an abrasive personality in the legislature, by running on lies. Since the moment of his taking office in that position, he's been running for something else, and the House of Representatives fell to him when Harriet Hageman decided to run for retiring Cynthia Lummis' position.
Gray has been a horrible Secretary of State and he'll be a horrible Congressman. His campaign was basically that he loves Trump more than Trump loves Trump. Trump is a horror. This is a good reason not to vote for Gray, as if any additional reasons were needed. If he wins, and he's likely to, he'll be worthless as a junior member a minority party who knows nothing about the state he's supposed to represent.
The Democrat is Lisa Kinney. I just heard her speak, and she speaks very well. She didn't have the chance to get into specifics, but they can be guessed at. I'd be surprised at best if she wasn't "pro Choice", which is pro infanticide.
The Libertarian is Shaun Johnson. I heard him speak too but he also didn't really have the chance to get into specifics. The one interesting thing I heard him say is that he wouldn't caucus with the Republicans or the Democrats.
I don't think that Johnson has any chance. I think Kinney has an off chance.
I suspect that if Kinney wins, Christensen will run against her in 2028 and likely take the seat. I think he's planning on running.
The choice this year, therefore, is between Kinney and Gray. Voting for Kinney is saying no to Trump insanity. Voting for Gray is saying yes to Trump insanity. That's about it.
At the Senate level the Democrats have a really good candidate, James Byrd. The Republicans have a really horrible candidate, Harriet Hageman, who stabbed Liz Cheney, a former friend of hers, in the back so that she could crawl over her dead political body to go to Washington, where reportedly she already owned a house. If she was voted out, she'd never come back. She's shown contempt for her own state on public lands while there, making her potentially an even worse candidate than Gray.
She received a lot of votes in the primary, in spite of being such a horrible candidate. It'll take a lot for Byrd to overcome it.
So here's where we are at. We cannot vote for Gray or Hageman. Voting for them is voting for the insanity of Donald Trump and the ongoing destruction of the American democracy. Can we morally vote for Kinney and Byrd, or do we not vote at all on those races. Not voting on them may very well be like voting for Gray and Hageman. It's an interesting, and paramount, moral question.
Footnotes
1. And save the "we're a republic not a democracy" crap. That's brainless twaddle. Our Constitution creates a democratic republic and people who say that should have their right to vote, drive a car, or speak a sentence revoked.
Last edition:
The 2026 Election, 23rd Edition. Stein's Law meets the GOP. The hints of a mutiny edition.
Sunday, October 11, 2026
Lex Anteinternet: Sunday Morning Scene. Back to the Coliseum.
Sunday Morning Scene. Back to the Coliseum.
I've been expecting it all along. It just came in a surprising fashion.
Deep hatred of Catholics is the last acceptable form of outright bigotry in the United States, although there's been a general rise of bigotry and racism during the illegitimate Trump interregnum. Trump's a populist, and populist tends to boost ignorance, with bigotry feeding on that. Most of the major populist movements a person can recall, the Nazis, the Communists, the Know Nothings, featured a lot of really ignorant people who were willing to be lead around by a others, sometimes a charismatic, to them, other.1 MAGA is a populist movement, masquerading as a conservative one, as Nazism was a populist movement that claimed conservatives within it. It's not too surprising, therefore, that we're seeing more of this sort of thing than we have at any point since the 1960s.
Quite a few of the more ignorant members of MAGA claim they support Trump as he's Godly, which is patently absurd, but there's no denying that far right wing Evangelicalism is a major component of MAGA. The Press, which isn't very well educated on religion anymore, just keeps calling them "Christians", which is really misleading. Some, but not all, far right Evangelicals supporting Trump hold religious beliefs that are very recent and very novel and well outside the mainstream of Apostolic Christianity and also out of the mainstream of most Protestant beliefs. Almost all MAGA Evangelicals fit into the ignorant of theology and Church history camp that's strong in the United States of being "Bible Believing Christians" who are pretty ignorant of a rule on the history of the books of the Bible.
Around the periphery of MAGA, however, there's been some Apostolic Christians, both Catholic and Orthodox, who have been, if not fully in the Trump camp, at least allowed to pitch a tent on its edges. Some of this is just flat out opportunistic on their part, and it looked like it would have a major impact on the Trump administration due to Trump's flat out ignorance and laziness. Inside the administration you have the example of J. D. Vance and Marco Rubio, and outside of it you have people like Kevin Roberts. You even have Peter Thiel, who claims not to be a Catholic but who keeps popping up in certain Catholic circles, as does Jordan Peterson and the Orthodox pundit Rod Dreher.2 National Conservatism has a strong right wing Catholic element to it, which is interesting in that it's sort of the intellectual heir of Fr. Charles Coughlin whose movement was shut down and who remains not widely admired in mainstream Catholic circles.
Most CAtholics that have supported Trump, however, have done so for one of two other reasons. The thinking ones have done so as it seemed like he was probably the only candidate who would address long held Catholic concerns, like abortion. People know that Trump himself was a louse, but they were willing to "hold their nose and vote". Others were Protestantized Catholics, of which there are a lot in the United States in the Boomer and Gen. Jones generations. These people are victims of the bad Catechization of the 1970s and as the US is a Protestant country, they've picked up a lot of Protestant beliefs.
Throughout Trump's second claim to power I've worried that the "Christian", i.e., far right Evangelical support of Trump would result in two things for Catholics. The first, which we will not address here, is that the association of "Christian" with Trump would result in Christianity taking a major hit. Evangelicalism definitely will. The second is that getting on the bus with Evangelicals would result in them beating us up as soon as we weren't of use to them.
And that's starting to happen.
The reason it started is because Pete Hegseth, who is festooned with Crusader themed tattoos announced that the U.S. Army is going to livestream the execution of former US Army Major Nidal Hasan who killed thirteen unarmed U.S. soldiers in 2009. 3 4
The Catholic Church is opposed to killing people. It's opposed to killing people in pretty absolutist terms and always has been, claims of Catholic haters aside. It's always been opposed to infanticide, including abortion. Early on in Church history there were serious debates if Christians, which were all Catholic, were required to be pacifists, and there are some saints who were. St. Martin of Tours, who had been a Roman soldier, famously told his commander "I am a soldier of Christ; it is not lawful for me to fight." Franz Jägerstätter, an Austrian farmer, went to his death in Nazi Germany rather than fight for the Nazi state. Ben Salmon, an American Catholic layman who has not been beatified went to prison as a conscientious objector during World War One as he held the view that all war was immoral. 5 And starting with Pope John Paul II, the Church has opposed the death penalty.
Catholic Bishops immediately responded to Hegseth's live stream the killing announcement by condemning it. Quiet a few individual priests with a net presence did as well. And then almost immediately after that Pope Leo XIV did, stating:
This caused an immediate reaction by some Evangelical Christians on the far right, and it did from a few very far right Catholics who are probably in the Rad Trad camp. Predictably, a notable number of the Evangelicals threw of pretending they approved of Catholics in any fashion. Laughable comments that the Pope doesn't know theology were out there, but more radical ones by the Invincibly Ignorant immediately arose as well.
Los of hte comments immediately cited the Old Testament, which is a bit ironic as frankly the CAtholic Church uses the Old Testament much more than any Protestant group does. There's a number of quotes from the Old Testament that address the death penalty, for example:
Whoever sheds human blood, by humans shall their blood be shed; for in the image of God has God made mankind.
Genesis 9:6
Anyone who strikes a person with a fatal blow is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:12
So there you go. . .but wait:
Anyone who attacks their father or mother is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:15 & 21:17
Anyone who curses their father or mother is to be put to death.
Exodus 21:15 & 21:17
Anyone who kidnaps someone is to be put to death, whether the victim has been sold or is still in the kidnapper’s possession.
Exodus 21:16
If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress are to be put to death."
Leviticus 20:10 (Adultery)
If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads.
Leviticus 20:13
Anyone who blasphemes the name of the Lord is to be put to death. The entire assembly must stone them."
Leviticus 24:16
Okay then, if we apply to the Old Testament, we need to be killing anyone cursing their parents, kidnappers, adulterers and adulteresses, homosexuals and blasphemeres.
Indeed, if this was fully applied, Donald Trump, Pete Hegseth, Paula White, and Scott Bessant wouldn't be in Washington D.C. as they're either adulturers or, in Bessant's case, a homosexual. Shoot, probably about 1/3d of the congregation of Protestant congregation would have to be offed, based on my observation that they don't take divorce or pre marital sex as a sin.
Well, what the heck? Why aren't we imposing the death penalty with sweeping abandon?
Well, that's because the Apostolic Churches and the Mainline Protestant Churches hold the view that Christ fulfilled the law and the Mosaic law does not apply to Christians. There are a pile of laws in the Mosaic Law that nobody seeks to apply to Christians due to the Catholic Church having alway taken this view. That's why Christians can eat shellfish and pork. Protestants who are running around declaring that the death penalty is Biblically mandated are apparently ignorant of the Bible and is laws, or they'd be killing adulterers, blasphemers, parent disrespecters, homosexuals and not eating shrimp.
Indeed, this was the case from day one. One of the very first debates in the Church was whether converts had to be circumcised. Nope, no longer applied. The dietary laws no longer did either.
It's also odd to see how all of these people aren't citing the New Testament. While the law was fulfilled by Christ, Christ did set down some pretty strict behavioral requirements. We are, for example supposed to love our enemies. That's a tough one.
Some have tried to drag out Church history, of which they're largely ignorant. "Well, the Church has always killed people. . ."
Nope. Indeed, from antiquity it's tried to stop it.
As Christ led you from death to life, so you should try to save not only the innocent, but also the guilty from death.
Pope St Nicholas the Great.
Now, I suppose you could argue that Pope St. Nicholas was talking about eternal life, but you sure are't going to save a guy by killing him.
And of course, there's the customary ignorant citation to the Black Legends were demonstrably untrue, but which lots of people still believe.
The Church as been against killing of all types right from the onset. But people, deep in their hearts, like killing. Lots of people make compromises with their Faith to justify their own acts and desires. Today, for example, is the anniversary of the murder of Hymie Weiss, the gangster who sanctioned hits, but who also carried a rosary in his pocket. As noted, plenty of very conservative Catholics have tried to say "well, I know that the Popes have said no death penalty, but it's still okay . . "6
It isn't.
And the real surprise to those not paying attention will be how prolife Catholics really are. Indeed, I've seen surprising statements in support of the Pope from completely secular sources.
And there's utterly no support for making this execution a public spectacle. We really are in the last days of the Roman Empire if we've reached that state. "War, inflation, . . . don't worry, look at my shiny baubles, come watch somebody die." Panem et circenses.
A danger of politics is that, for people who have a religion, even slightly, that it becomes easy to confuse your politics or your personal beliefs with your religion. The various flavors of the American Civil Religion are packed with that. Divorce is okay, and even extramarital sex, unless it's homosexual. . . Trump must be a Godly man as he's doing what I want him to, even if he's a liar and a serial polygamist.
There was always going to be a day when the Evangelical far right discovered that the Catholic Church is the Universal Church, it's everywhere, and that local politics are secondary to it. We're not right, not left, we're Catholic, the original Christians.
Make every effort to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to. Once the owner of the house gets up and closes the door, you will stand outside knocking and pleading, ‘Sir, open the door for us.’
But he will answer, "I don’t know you or where you come from."
Luke 13:22-30.
This warning applies to us as well. "For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more." Luke 12:48. We really can't ignore the barbarism of the Trump administration any more. We've invaded a foreign nation without cause, we're killing Iranians in an undeclared war, and we're murdering people on the high seas. The Nuremberg Defense or just ignoring it all doesn't work.
Well, we were always going to be hated. Frankly, as Catholics, when everything is going well for us, it's not going well.
Footnotes:
1. Hitler was reportedly very charismatic, although watching him from the outside, it's hard to see why. To his followers, Trump is charismatic, while to most other people he certainly is not.
2. I'm not claiming that Peterson is influential in the administration, but rather he's in the Catholic end of the National Conservatives even though he is not Catholic. His wife is. Dreher was Catholic at one time and converted to Orthodoxy, where he remains with one foot in the Catholic door and nearly, for that matter, in the back pews. Dreher is partially responsible for the intellectual atmosphere that made Trump possible even though he now outright holds Trump in contempt.
3. Hegseth is some sort of Evangelical on the far right. Actual Crusaders would have regarded him as a weird heretic.
4. The fact that the killings occurred in 2009 is a really good argument against the death penalty in and of itself as it takes so long and is so expensive that the punishment aspect of it is nearly lost by the time the sentence is carried out.
5. St. Augustine famously developed the Just War Theory, which people sort of naively regard as a Catholic free pass to war. It isn't. The theory has always been fairly restrictive and even though Catholics have waged and been in a lot of wars, a lot of wars don't fit the category of being "just".
Even when they are, finding a war that's justly waged is difficult. World War Two probably stands out as a war which, for the Allies, was just, but the Allies clearly took deeply immoral actions in it, the nighttime bombing raids of the RAF, and the USAF nuclear bombings, being the two primary examples for the Western Allies.
Recently Pope Leo has further clarified the doctrine and while I do not think that his statements actually develop it in any fashion, they caused shock waves and they probably should as Catholics really need to consider if they can morally serve in the U.S. military at this point.
6. No Pope has declared the death penalty invalid ex cathedra, so a slim ability to argue it's still okay exists. But it's very slim.
Saturday, October 10, 2026
Lex Anteinternet: On Obsolete Institutions, Immoral behavior, Old Standards. Mehr Mensch Sein. Cornell Rape and Other Matters.
On Obsolete Institutions, Immoral behavior, Old Standards. Mehr Mensch Sein. Cornell Rape and Other Matters.
I felt like bait.
So basically… it’s dangerous to be around men?
I understand the argument about risk, judgment, alcohol, and putting yourself in vulnerable situations. Those are conversations worth having.
But there’s something deeply unsettling about telling young women: You know what men are like. You know these places are dangerous. Why did you go?
Women go to fraternity parties because they want to socialize. They want to flirt. They want to meet men. They may even want to have consensual sex.
None of those things should require accepting sexual assault as a foreseeable consequence of being around men.
At some point, “women need to make better choices” becomes an extraordinarily damning statement about men.
So the feminist position is “not all men,” but the anti-feminist position is apparently, “Ladies, you knew there would be men there”?
Well, she's correct in everything she said, the commenter, but she's wrong. Large groups of young men have fallen off the rails in this way since we have been a species. So, yes, "it's dangerous to be around men".
It is.
Not all men all the time, but this gets back to standards of the past. It's not that dangerous to be around a bunch of young men. . . who are near older men. . .and better yet if some of them are relatives. I've seen young men begin to act improperly towards young women where older men were present and intervened, sometimes forcibly.8 In other words, being at the Sheepherders' Fair is one thing, being at Moonies, apparently, quite another.
And, influencer, having a wardrobe made entirely of overly tight halter tops is dangerous. That does, in the real world, one thing. It advertises your boobs, and advertises that your boobs are available for the taking, along with things located elsewhere on your female body.
We'll loop back around here to the Flanagan article, which is drawing flak. Flanagan condemns franternitis solidly in the article. She notes that fraternities were dangerous when she was in college, and that a boyfriend she was breaking up with warned her never to go upstairs in one, which she never did.
Then she asked this question:
That’s the saddest thing about these old rituals. What attracts women to those parties—late at night, like Jane Doe—to walk alone to a fraternity house and take her chances?
What she’s really looking for is a man. And she has no idea how to find a good one.
















