Isebrand

April 25, 1945 — Elbe Day and 46-nation conference (UNCIO) regarding the planned United Nations — 75 years ago today

Elbe Day, April 25, 1945, was the day Soviet and American troops met at the Elbe River, near Torgau in Germany, marking an important step toward the end of the Second World War (World War II) in Europe.

In an arranged photo commemorating the meeting of the Soviet and American armies, 2nd Lt. William Robertson (U.S. Army) and Lt. Alexander Silvashko (Red Army) faced one another with hands clasped and arms around each other's shoulders. In the background are two flags and a poster. (U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Pictures of World War II, image #121 (111-SC-205228), "Happy 2nd Lt. William Robertson and Lt. Alexander Sylvashko, Red Army, shown in front of sign [East Meets West] symbolizing the historic meeting of the Soviet and American Armies, near Torgau, Germany on Elbe Day.)

The NY Times blog summarized on April 25, 2012:

The Times reported on the events of April 25 in Germany in its April 28 edition. The war correspondent Drew Middleton wrote, “Two armies of plain men who had marched and fought from the blood-splashed beaches of Normandy and the shattered streets of Stalingrad have met on the Elbe River in the heart of Germany, splitting the Third Reich and sealing the doom of the German Army, whose tread shook the world only three short years ago.”

Five days later, the leader of Germany, Adolf Hitler, committed suicide in his bunker in Berlin as Soviet troops continued their conquest of the city. His successor Admiral Karl Dönitz, as Staatsoberhaupt (Head of State), immediately began to negotiate a surrender to the Western Allies (i.e., the United States and the United Kingdom). On May 8, 1945, representatives of what little was left of the German Third Reich signed instruments of unconditional surrender to the Allies in both Rheims, in France, and Berlin, the German capital.

Also on April 25, 1945, in San Francisco, 46 nations began meeting to discuss the creation of the United Nations, an international organization intended to maintain peace between nations. Also known as the San Francisco Conference, the official name of the two-month-long convention was the United Nations Conference on International Organization (UNCIO). It resulted in the creation of the United Nations Charter, which was opened for signature on June 26, 1945.

Insignia of the conference, a prototype of the current logo of the United Nations.

Another photo from that day: "At a prisoner-of-war enclosure near Remagen, Germany, a U.S. soldier takes part in keeping guard over thousands of German soldiers captured in the Ruhr area, 25 April 1945 (U.S. Army photograph.)

Newfoundland joins Canada: the 31st of March 1949

 

Congratulations, Newfoundland. The island entity of Newfoundland joined Canada on this day, March 31, in 1949.

 

Newfoundland had effectively relinquished self-rule in 1934, the only British dominion ever to have gained and then to have relinquished its self-governing status, thereby becoming a dependency of the U.K. This ended 79 years of self-government, though de jure Newfoundland remained an independent dominion until it joined Canada. In fact, from the enactment of 1931’s Statute of Westminster until joining Canada, Newfoundland’s flag was no longer its own distinctive version of the Red Ensign but simply the Union Flag (Union Jack) of the United Kingdom. 

 

On 6 December 2001, an amendment was made to the Constitution of Canada to change the name of the province of Newfoundland to Newfoundland and Labrador, the flag of which in vexillological terms is not complicated per se but perhaps a bit...I don't know, to be honest. It's distinctive, anyway.

 

 

 

Virus Hunter

When I read Virus Hunter (1998) about 15 years ago, I found it fascinating and a bit scary. But mostly fascinating. Now...not so much. More scary. Its author, Dr. C. J. Peters, now 90 years old, worked for the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID), Fort Detrick, Maryland.

Ever since reading that book, every time I hear the word "outbreak" in the news, my ears perk up. Since then, I've not been one to just ignore news about Ebola, SARS, swine flu (SIV), "bird flu" and other outbreaks—or about the occasional isolated case of plague, or about antibiotic-resistant bacterial diseases, and similar things. And each time, I'm grateful that what I'm hearing or reading about is not what I think of as "the big one"—some sort of new, highly contagious viral hemorrhagic fever (VHF) or a virulent bacterial scourge like the Black Death.

(At one point in the past after reading this book, because of this book, I bought—not much—stock in Clorox. The word "bleach" seems to be on about every third page of the book.)

This novel coronavirus will kill many people. It might kill me or people I know. Most people will be left physically untouched by it. Most who get it will have mild symptoms. But, no matter how bad this novel coronavirus ends up being, the world needs to wake up to the fact that this novel coronavirus is light action, a trifle, compared to what is theoretically possible. I think of it exactly the way some people think of "The Big One" meaning a massive California earthquake. I truly believe it's only a matter of time, not if but when. I hope it isn't in my lifetime or the lifetime of anyone I know. I hope I'm wrong and it never happens at all. But you know what? Cutting funding to research and defense programs related to disease (and bio attacks) is just not, not, not a good idea.

Anyway, thank you Col. Peters for your work.

More on C. J. Peters here: https://www.statnews.com/2018/02/20/virus-hunter-cj-peters/

In Our Time: The Rapture

I'm quite please with this episode of BBC Radio 4's In Our Time, the long-running topical panel discussion series hosted by Melvyn Bragg, about the Rapture.

 

Now perhaps primarily thought of as a podcast, In Our Time has been my favorite radio show for almost 20 years, since well before the days of podcasts. There have been 873 episodes, all relating to arts, science, history, and ideas.

 

For most of the show's run, its format has been Bragg and three, sometimes four, academics, with Bragg asking questions to ensure that he elicits from the academics a solid if basic overview of the topic in the given 45 minutes. And he's not afraid to show some impatience or frustration with the academics if he feels they are losing the thread a bit.

The episode is available through iTunes (podcasts) and online here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl 

Tynwald's 940th anniversary

2019 is the 940th anniversary of the founding of Tynwald, the Isle of Man's legislature and arguably the oldest continuous parliamentary body in the world. (Image: Flag of the High Court of Tynwald, i.e., the Parliament of the Isle Of Man.)

Like the Icelandic Þingvellir, the word Tynwald derives from the Old Norse word Þingvǫllr, meaning the meeting place of the assembly. The Old Norse word for meeting, Þing (thing), is one of the few Old Norse words to pass directly into English, though in English it obviously means more than just a meeting—it can refer to just about...any thing.

The Isle of Man is a self-governing British Crown dependency. Its head of state is Queen Elizabeth II in her own right as Lord of Mann. She's represented by a lieutenant governor. The defense of the island falls under the jurisdiction of the United Kingdom.

For centuries, the first language of the island's native inhabitants was Manx, also known as Manx Gaelic (sometimes historically spelled Manks). It's no longer spoken widely on Man and since 1974 is extinct as a first language, but it still plays an important cultural role. 

The island is also known for, among other things, the Manx cat breed—noteworthy for its genetic mutation resulting in very short, stubby tails and slightly longer hind legs—and the Manx Loaghtan sheep, which can have up to six horns; the sheep's meat is considered a delicacy.

The map below shows the Isle of Man's place within the Kingdom of the Isles, which

comprised the Hebrides, the islands of the Firth of Clyde and the Isle of Man from the 9th to the 13th centuries AD. The islands were known to the Norse as the Suðreyjar, or "Southern Isles" as distinct from the Norðreyjar or Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland. (Wikipedia)

Top 1.0 percent in the U.S. reaches highest wages ever—up 157 percent since 1979

The Economic Policy Institute (EPI) reports that the wages of the top 1% have reached a new height—up 157% since 1979.

*Average annual wages in 2017 of the top 0.1%: $2,757,000. 
They earn 343% more than they did in 1979.

*Average annual wages in 2017 of the top 1% (excluding the top 0.1%): $718,766. 
They earn 157% more than they did in 1979.

*Average annual wages in 2017 of "the top 5%" (95th–99th tier, the top 5%–2%): $299,810.
They earn 69% more than they did in 1979.

*Average annual wages in 2017 of "the top 10%" (90th–94th tier, the top 10%–6%): $118,400.
They earn 44% more than they did in 1979

[That's 1.2% annualized wage growth, which is basically flat when you factor in inflation, though the top 10% has income other than wages and they tend to have at least slightly appreciating real estate, too—at least one home, probably in most cases only one home.]

*Average annual wages in 2017 of the bottom 90%: $36,182.
They earn 22% more than they did in 1979. 

[Annualized that's only 0.6% annual growth in wages, far too little to keep up with inflation, and the bottom 90% is *not* asset-rich or likely to have income besides wages.]

For a look at the factors driving wealth inequality, see my post "Capitalism simply isn't working and here are the reasons why" 

From that post:

Wealth inequality rises as 

1) return on capital rises faster than both workers' wages and general economic growth (see chart #1, click to enlarge, and for more on the related issue of decreasing income mobility in the U.S. see "Inequality Is Not the Problem," Jeff Madrick, NYR Blog, 2014),

2) super-high-income workers (e.g., CEOs) reward each other with mega-salaries to "keep up with the other rich" (see chart #2 from "We're More Unequal Than You Think," The New York Review of Books, 2012),

3) inherited wealth and corporate gains aren't greatly taxed (compared to the early post-WWII era especially), 

4) tax-reduction/-avoidance schemes abound especially for the rich who can afford the experts to manage their money globally, and 

5) the cultural and societal insularity of the wealthy, their disconnectedness from the vast majority of those who are not exceedingly wealthy, combines with their money-driven power (e.g., campaign contributions and armies of lobbyists) to keep the system in place. Such power puts me in mind of the old "golden rule"—he who has the gold makes the rules.

Importantly, due largely to #4 above, the middle class ends up with a disproportionate share of the tax burden to keep the social safety net, defense, services (sanitation, policing, fire fighting), education, and transportation infrastructure in place, even though the services, education, and infrastructure benefit the mega-wealthy, too, directly or indirectly.

One-hundred years ago, November 21, 1918: The Qualification of Women Act allowed women to be elected to the Parliament

One-hundred years ago today, the British Parliament passed the "Parliament (Qualification of Women) Act" allowing women to become MPs (Members of Parliament). It read in part:

woman shall not be disqualified by sex or marriage for being elected to or sitting or voting as a Member of the Commons House of Parliament.

The United States of America preceded the United Kingdom by two years in electing a woman to the national legislative assembly.

 

Jeannette Pickering Rankin (1880–1973) was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives by the state of Montana in 1916.

 

Constance Georgine Markievicz (nee Gore-Booth; 1986–1927) was elected to the UK Parliament in 1918, however, as a member of Sinn Fein, she did not take her seat. Nancy Astor (Viscountess Astor), CH (1879–1964) was the first woman to take her seat in Parliament, which she did after winning a by-election in 1919.

If you can keep it

The Constitution is remarkable. But it is not magical. The founders designed the Congress to be a check on the Executive. But it's arguable that their working assumptions for America's future excluded one in which a political party would be complicit in an a White House attempt to undermine that Constitution's democratic and Enlightenment underpinnings, and that that Presidential administration would enjoy the support of nearly one-half of the U.S. population. After all, most of our republic's founders seem to have assumed that there would be no political parties in our nation at all.

When Benjamin Franklin remarked to a fellow citizen that the Constitutional Convention had created "a republic, if you can keep it," I think he had in mind the reality that the Constitution is imperfect and might not withstand sufficiently strong and sustained anti-democratic and anti-Enlightenment sentiment within the republic itself. At the risk of sounding alarmist, hallmarks of the strength of such a sentiment are evident now. They're demonstrated by our President and many members of his administration and supported by millions of Americans and various media outlets. Consider: the scapegoating of minorities, the peddling in rank lies and conspiracy theories (such as former President Obama being Kenya-born or a non-existent invasion being funded by domestic political operatives), the rejection of standards of evidence, a disdain for the rule of law, evident in the President's desire to have the Department of Justice operate as a protective police force of and for his agenda and his administration and not for the nation, an embracing of social Darwinism (if you'll excuse the anachronism...the closest thing to that in Franklin's mind was probably a kind of archly cynical Machiavellianism), not to mention corruption and nepotism. And while the President himself is neither an ultimate or proximate cause of them, the increasing number of hate-crimes, including anti-Semitic ones, and the increasing visibility—the emboldening—of white nationalists in their pronouncements and activities speak to the rise of illiberal, anti-democratic ideas that the President does not discourage.

Last night's midterm elections were an important achievement for the Democratic Party, especially in light of the systemic obstacles of voter suppression and gerrymandering that the Democrats faced. But there is—it almost goes without saying—still work to do; it's just begun, actually. Last night's approximately 7% nationwide Democratic vote majority overall is less than Democrats managed against Republicans in midterms during George W. Bush's presidency. There are still hearts and minds to win, gerrymandering to be reversed, voter suppression to be stopped, the out-sized influence of corporate and oligarchic money to be lessened, the waning influence of relatively apolitical (or at least only slightly political) news sources to be addressed (if that's even possible), the rise in propaganda—especially via social media—to be countered, and a vitally important renaissance of civics education and awareness to be constructed. (I believe the undermining of all of the soft sciences and the humanities in U.S. education is a factor, one among many to be sure, in the rise of illiberalism, of which Trumpism is a symptom.)

That there is a political party in Congress, the Republican Party, that has not one member who would be a part of this project to bolster democracy's health is the kind of reality that will test the Constitution's viability. Our democracy is surprisingly robust. There is a lot of reason for hope. Nonetheless, the Constitution is an experiment, as is this republic. The republic may be stronger that Weimar or the ancient Roman republic but it is not any more than they were inherently a guaranteed or certain thing. Implicit in Franklin's words is the reality that it can be lost if it is not actively nurtured.

Image: Joseph Duplessis (1725–1802). Portrait of Benjamin Franklin. c. 1785. Oil on canvas. 28.5 in by 23.5 in. National Portrait Gallery, Washington D.C., U.S.A.

Lieutenant-Colonel John "Mad Jack" Malcolm Thorpe Fleming Churchill, DSO & Bar, MC & Bar (1906–1996)

"Fighting Jack Churchill", born on this day in Hong Kong, September 16, 1906, was a British Army officer who fought in the Second World War equipped with bagpipes and armed with a longbow and a basket-hilted Scottish broadsword. (Churchill, leading troops with his broadsword drawn, is identifiable on the far right in the photograph above of a military training exercise.)

Churchill is the last British soldier known to have killed an enemy combatant with a bow and arrow, which he did during the British Expeditionary Force's retreat to Dunkirk, France, in May 1940.

For his actions at Dunkirk and later at Vågsøy, Norway, Churchill received the Military Cross and Bar. He also won the Distinguished Service Order and Bar.

He also fought with distinction in Italy (1943) and Yugoslavia (1944), being captured by Germans in the later. After Germany's surrender, he fought in Burma (1945), and supposedly remarked relative to the war's sudden end, "If it hadn't been for those damn Yanks, we could've kept the war going for another ten years!"

He later served in British Palestine and Australia, and upon returning to England, before he retired, became the first man to ride a surfboard—which he designed himself—on the River Severn's five-foot tidal bore.

His motto: "Any officer who goes into action without his sword is improperly dressed."

In January 2018, with his two sons in the audience as special guests, Jack was added to the Museum of Curiosity during a live broadcast of BBC Radio 4's panel show The Museum of of Curiosity. (The museum is imaginary, in case you're wondering.) The show's host related this tale:

Churchill eventually settled for a desk job. On his daily journey home to Surrey his fellow commuters were often alarmed when just before his stop he would suddenly hurl his briefcase out of the train window. What they didn't know was that he was tossing it into his back garden so he wouldn't have to carry it home.

Vindolanda birthday invitation to the commander's wife

The earliest known example of writing in Latin by a woman—and the earliest message known to have been written by a woman in Britain—is a birthday invitation, from Claudia Severa, written in ink on wood and sent around the year A.D. 100 to Sulpicia, the wife of the prefect of the Ninth Cohort of Batavians and commander of Vindolanda, an Imperial Roman army fort manned by auxiliaries (non-citizens). The invitation is the most well-known of the Vindolanda Tablets found at the notoriously waterlogged Vindolanda archaeological site.

See the translation and description below.

I'd like to think that Sulpicia eagerly accepted the invitation.

Claudia Severa to her Lepidina greetings. On 11 September, sister, for the day of the celebration of my birthday, I give you a warm invitation to make sure that you come to us, to make the day more enjoyable for me by your arrival, if you are present (?). Give my greetings to your Cerialis. My Aelius and my little son send him (?) their greetings. (2nd hand) I shall expect you, sister. Farewell, sister, my dearest soul, as I hope to prosper, and hail. (Back, 1st hand) To Sulpicia Lepidina, wife of Cerialis, from Severa.

British Museum Museum number: 1986,1001.64.

"This diptych contains a letter to Sulpicia Lepidina from Claudia Severa, wife of Aelius Brocchus, sending Lepidina a warm invitation to visit her for her (Severa's) birthday (on the celebration of birthdays by private individuals see RE VII, 1142-4) and appending greetings to Cerialis from herself and greetings from her husband. The elegant script in which this letter is written is also probably to be recognised in 243, 244 and 248. The letters are slim, with marked ascenders and descenders, and very little use of ligature. There is occasional use of the apex mark for which see pp.57-61, above. In the present text the use is not always in long quantities. It is quite certain that the author is Severa herself, adding a brief message and the closing greeting in her own hand as she also does in 292 and 293. Almost certainly, therefore, these are the earliest known examples of writing in Latin by a woman."

Signing of the Declaration of Independence, August 2, 1776

(Image: The signatures as they appear on the iconic Stone Engraving (1823) of the Declaration of Independence)

The majority of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration of Independence signed the formally engrossed (written) parchment version of the Declaration on this day, the 2nd of August, in 1776.

On July 2, 1776, the Lee Resolution for independence from Great Britain was unanimously passed by the Second Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia, and the text of the Declaration was adopted on July 4, 1776. On July 19, 1776, the Continental Congress ordered that the Declaration be engrossed—i.e., carefully written in large, legible script—for signing.

The task was assigned to Timothy Matlack, a clerk in the Pennsylvania State House. Matlack’s work, as summarized by the National Archives, "included laying out the text on the parchment, determining the margins and space between lines, and calculating the space that would be needed at the bottom of the document for signatures."

The Matlack version that was signed still exists. It is on display in the National Archives Building in Washington, D.C., but is faded so badly as to be almost illegible. This is in part because the document was not particularly well cared for even by the standards of the 1800s and early 1900s.

(Image: The original Matlack version of the Declaration of Independence, now badly faded.)

So, it's not surprising that the Declaration as most people envision it isn't the Matlack version but what is known as the Stone Engraving, a facsimile printed by William J. Stone which extremely closely reproduced how the Declaration appeared in 1823. At least two earlier facsimile versions by other printers did not as precisely reflect the original, and the Stone Engraving became America's iconic version of the Declaration of Independence.

(Image: The Stone Engraving—the iconic, 1823 facsimile of the Declaration of Independence.)

The very first printing of the Declaration was published the night after its text had been approved, July 4, 1776, and is known as The Dunlap Broadside, named after the printer tasked with its publishing, John Dunlap, who produced about 200 copies. They were distributed on July 5, 1776. For the broadside, Dunlap used the typeface Caslon, designed by William Caslon I (c. 1692–1766) in London—specifically, typography experts surmise, Caslon fonts English Roman No. 1 or English Roman No. 2. A high-resolution version of the broadside is available online through the Library of Congress.

(Image: The Dunlap Broadside)

In total, fifty-six delegates of the Continental Congress signed the Declaration. A few did do so later than August 2, 1776. Interestingly, some who signed it were not delegates or were delegates who were not present on the day that the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration's text on July 4, 1776. For various reasons, mostly circumstantial, eight delegates present on July 4, 1776, never signed it; only two of them did not sign due to reasons of principle—John Alsop and John Dickinson—and George Read and Robert Morris did not vote in favor of the resolution of independence but signed the Declaration nonetheless, thereby joining the signatories who, in the words of the Declaration's famous last line, "mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor."

Memorial Day 2018

"When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, we gave our today."
- John Maxwell Edmonds (1875–1958)

See the PBS NewsHour story "Thousands of American military graves lie forgotten and lost abroad."

Here is the The Foreign Burial of American War Dead map for the book and project of the same name. The project invites all to "participate in the development of the map with corrections, additions and comments sent to foreignburial@gmail.com."

John Maxwell Edmonds (1875–1958), a vicar, schoolmaster, and later classics scholar, at Jesus College, Cambridge University, penned his famous epitaph for commemoration of British and Indian dead at the Kohima War Cemetery in India (Second World War). The lines were inspired by those of Simonides honoring the Spartans who died in the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 B.C.

Photo by U.S. Navy by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Jennifer L. Jaqua.

John James Audubon (April 26, 1785 – January 27, 1851)

It was British appetite for Audubon's work that catapulted his career forward. He couldn't find a U.S. publisher.

The Saint-Domingue-born (French-citizen) Audubon was an illegal immigrant—sent to America by his father, with a fake passport.

Audubon was born Jean Rabin. The French colony of Saint-Domingue gained independence in 1804 as the sovereign nation of Haiti following an insurrection by self-liberated slaves.

Audubon's paintings are iconic Americana. Working in America, including frontier regions, as an ornithologist and naturalist, he identified 25 new species of birds. His wife Lucy (Bakewell) Audubon was the family's main breadwinner until, at the age of 41, Audubon found interest in his naturalist artwork among British audiences. His most famous work is a massive color-plate book The Birds of America.

Audubon was born on this day in 1785. He died in Manhattan on January 27, 1851, aged 65.

Image: The snowy owl, in John James Audubon’s The Birds of America, 1827–38, (c) The British Library Board. 

Trumpism considered

The cover story of the April 21–27, 2018, issue of The Economist asks "What's become of the Republican Party?"

It's a party driven by loyalty not "to an ideal, a vision or a legislative programme" but to President Trump "and to the prejudice and rage which consume the voter base.... In America that is unprecedented and it is dangerous."

The article notes that the heart of Trump's loyalty-based system of governance is really a "contempt for the truth." It's deeply troubling that so many millions of Americans and the vast majority of Republican voters find this tolerable.

This cult of loyalty to Trump and his base affects government in three ways, the article continues. By:

1. Replacing coherent policymaking with government by "impulse—anger, nativism, mercantilism—beyond the reach of empirical argument."
   
   
2. Eroding norms and conventions of America's democracy, in particular the presidency.
   
   Citing David Frum, the article outlines Trump's disregard for norms: hiding his tax returns (a norm in place since Gerald Ford), ignoring conflict-of-interest rules (since Richard Nixon), running a business for profit (since Lyndon Johnson), appointing relatives to senior posts in the administration (since John F. Kennedy), and enriching his family by patronage (since Ulysses S. Grant).
   
   
3. Treating opponents as wicked or traitorous.

How did this happen? In "How the elephant got its Trump," The Economist warns that Trump’s takeover of his party was not a one-off, is nearly total, and will not easily be undone. 

Trump has an 85% approval rating among Republicans. Apparently, they like what he offers: "a set of feelings—about patriotism, about who is a proper American and who is not, about foreigners, about elites, about sovereignty and about power."

Who are these pro-Trump Americans? The work of Larry Bartels, a political scientist at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, suggests that many of them

are united by cultural issues rather than narrowly political ones. They tend to share respect for the flag and the English language, and negative feelings towards Muslims, immigrants, atheists, and gays and lesbians.

According to Andrea Volkens of the Berlin Social Science Centre, already by 2013 the Republican Party was more similar to "France’s National Front than to the Conservatives in Britain or Canada," based on a comparison of manifestos (a.k.a. platforms) of various political parties.

The strongest correlation to the transformation of the Republican Party, the article explains, is a shift by white voters without a college education to the Republican Party between 2009 and 2015.

The article stresses that neither the great recession (economics) or the presidency of Barack Obama (racism) are wholly satisfactory explanations for this.

However, in an April 23, 2018, article in The Atlantic, "People Voted for Trump Because They Were Anxious, Not Poor," by Olga Khazan, the findings of University of Pennsylvania political scientist Diana C. Mutz point to anxiety as a cause of the shift by white voters without a college education.

Trump supporters were also more likely than Clinton voters to feel that “the American way of life is threatened,” and that high-status groups, like men, Christians, and whites, are discriminated against.

Khazan says that studies such as Mutz's "dispel the fiction...that the majority of Trump supporters are disenfranchised victims of capitalism’s cruelties," sometimes called the "left-behind" theory. The article notes that Hillary Clinton decisively beat Trump in the 2016 General Election among Americans making less than $50,000 a year.

That cultural anxiety and fear in general were strong motivators for many Trump votes is not new news. Khazan's colleague Molly Ball in her article for The Atlantic in September 2016 "Donald Trump and the Politics of Fear" highlights some data from the Public Religion Research Institute:

65 percent of Trump supporters feared being victims of terrorism, versus 51 percent of all Americans. Three-fourths of Trump supporters feared being victims of crime, versus 63 percent overall. Trump supporters also disproportionately feared foreign influence: 83 percent said the American way of life needed to be protected from it, versus 55 percent overall.... Economic anxiety, while widespread in America today, is not a distinguishing characteristic of Trump supporters; other anxieties are.

Ball turns to David Bennett, a historian and the author of the 1995 book The Party of Fear: The American Far Right From Nativism to the Militia Movement, for additional comment.

Nativism, [Bennett] notes, was relatively low during the Great Depression, and rises in nativist sentiment haven’t generally correlated with periods of economic strain. Rather, they have correlated with large-scale increases in foreign immigration, which natives tend to view as a threat to the nation’s safety and culture.
.....
Bennett believes that Trump has combined the fear of foreign ideology with fear of foreign immigration in a novel way, with his twin emphases on Islamist terror and Mexican migrants.

These findings hew closely to those covered by Sean McElwee and Jason McDaniel in the March 14, 2018, article in The Nation entitled "Fear of Diversity Made People More Likely to Vote for Trump." In one representative study neither "the trade-policy baseline question nor a scale of questions about trade policy predicted Trump support." What is more, "respondents who agreed that the system benefited powerful elites were more likely to reject Trump."

McElwee and McDaniel conclude that the "2016 election was really a battle about having an open society" and, more sweepingly, that 

throughout history, divides within the working class have been more salient than divides between the working class and the rich. Race, gender, immigration status, and religious status have served as such wedges.

(Also see the PRRI/The Atlantic survey analysis reported in May 2017, "Beyond Economics: Fears of Cultural Displacement Pushed the White Working Class to Trump." It identified "five significant independent predictors of support for Trump" among white working-class voters specifically.)

The Economist article also considers another factor in Trump's rise: social media. Trump, as well as Fox News, appreciated

how new unfettered and often fact-free discourse worked. Mr Trump could, and did, speak the language of vulgar resentment like a pro. For many of his supporters, the more this was disapproved of, the more valid and admirable it seemed.

In closing, The Economist article notes that "because the party was becoming Trumpian long before Mr Trump took over....the attitudes he has ridden to office will still outlive him."

(Also see the September 2016 "Our Politics, Our Parenting" edition of NPR's Hidden Brain podcast, in which George Lakoff's "strict father" and "nurturant parent" models for predicting political differences are discussed.)

February 6, 1918 — Women (Some Anyway) Gain the Right to Vote in the United Kingdom

On the 6th of February in 1918, the Representation of the People Act 1918 was approved by Royal Assent and began the enfranchisement of women in the United Kingdom. Under the 1918 Act, all men over the age of 21, or over the age of 19 if they were servicemen, were enfranchised. So too, women over 30 years of age received the vote, but only if they were a member of or married to a member of the Local Government Register, if they were a property owner, or if they were a graduate voting in a University constituency.

Nonetheless, the Act was a huge step forward for democracy and women's suffrage in particular. By the end of 1918, the size of the British electorate tripled to about 21,400,000, which included voters in Ireland, then still under British rule, with women accounting for approximately 43% of eligible voters nationwide.

Today, Shadow Minister for Labour Laura Pidcock MP (North West Durham) tweeted:

The 1918 Act is a milestone that should be celebrated, but it's also important to remember that (a) the vote was not given to working class women & (b) when the vote was achieved, it was due to the protests & sacrifices of those women, not the gift of men.

And Prime Minister Theresa May tweeted:

What better way to start today's #Vote100 celebrations than by gathering with all the talented female MPs in Parliament. More must be done, but I'm proud that there are over 200 female MPs — our democracy is stronger as a result.

In the United States, women gained the right to vote through the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which was ratified on August 18, 1920.

Image, click to enlarge: Suffragette in Trafalgar Sq., c. 1911. Charles Chusseau-Flaviens, photographer. Photograph from Spitalfields Life blog courtesy of George Eastman House.

Image, click to enlarge: Photograph posted to Twitter by British Prime Minister Theresa May.

#VOTE100

Trump said there'd be more winning. So far, he is

Last night on MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show, I saw a typically somnolent Sen. Richard Blumenthal attempt to stop the Trumpist political tide by invoking Richard Nixon ad nauseam. This is...attack? It's like being assaulted by wet bread. If it's the best that Democrats have, they're in big trouble.

That Trump supposedly ordered the firing of Robert Mueller, special counsel for the Department of Justice to investigate “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump, and any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation," may prove to be more interesting than it is significant. Evidence of intent to obstruct justice? Perhaps, but that decision will be reached in part in the court of public opinion, like it or not. In the end, Trump did not fire Mueller. To most of the American people, including many independents, that fact will far outweigh the fact that Trump tried to have Mueller fired. Again: like it or not.

Trump is welcomed at Davos, rescheduled to visit London, credited with the Koreas having re-engaged and even having marched unified in the Winter Olympics, basking in a long-sought GOP-style tax reform, and relatively secure in a 40% approval rating despite (for independents)—and because of (for his base)—his self-aggrandizement, impulsiveness, nastiness, mendacity so shockingly brazen and frequent that it suggests knavery is an essence of his character, de facto nepotism, and assaults on the softest vital elements of any Western liberal democracy: its democratic norms and institutions not explicitly delineated in a constitution. Examples of those norms are Enlightenment-born concepts of standards of evidence and the supremacy of law. He is running rings around a feckless Democratic Party that last weekend let Trump position them as caring more about illegal immigrants than about keeping the government functioning and Social Security checks being cut. (While those Democrats try to argue that the President can't or shouldn't govern, they shut down government. This weakened Democrats' position markedly.)

Democrats are getting desperate and floundering. I continue to predict that there will be no blue tsunami in November. I think there is a 50/50 chance that the Democrats capture of the House of Representatives, and that if they do so it will be by eight or fewer seats. Of course, much could change in the political landscape by November 2018, but one thing I think will not change: the passion of Trump's base.

All things being equal, President Trump will be a two-term president, too. Of course he may self-destruct or overreach, but it's unlikely given that so much of what he's done already was supposedly self-destructive or overreaching—until it was proved by his political survival that it wasn't.

He does, in fact, have fairly good instincts in some key regards, including how to appeal to voters in our social media, celebrity-driven age of economic insecurity and short attention spans. He's expert at prodding Democrats into acting like their opponents' caricatures of Democrats and keeping them off balance, unfocused, and defensively reactive. His 40% approval rating can easily become 50%+ with a continued strong stock market and an enduring perception that the economy is improving, the reduction in many American's taxes (for now), and a lengthening string of political successes (Americans like winners)—of which he's had several, the least-appreciated of which is the appointment of a record number of conservative judges.

All things being equal, Donald J. Trump will likely go down in history as, in a word: important, which is really to say revolutionary and significant—for good or ill. Andrew Jackson and FDR are also recorded as being such and only after breathless, agonizing cries from their opponents in their lifetime. Reevaluations have diminished the stature of the former more than the latter. (There's hope for us still, I suppose, if we value ethnic cleansing against indigenous people less than we do creating Social Security and vanquishing Nazis.)

Of course, all things will not remain equal. But if most things do—such as Trump's base's strength and his opponents' relative weakness—he'll endure. Yes, something seismic might occur. Mueller might actually find evidence of Trump's direct collusion with foreign anti-American actors, for instance. That seems about as likely as finding Jimmy Hoffa alive and well and living in Denmark. Or perhaps the Democrats will acquire the right message and messengers so that they offer something other than old ideas and tired political styles voiced by coastal eggheads who seem to forget that only one-third of U.S. adults have a college degree. That seems about as likely as a hit musical about Chester A. Arthur. But maybe that's not so far fetched. Ol' Chet reflects something of the spirit of our age, being, after all, the President who moved rightward to rip open Native American land to settlers by executive order and signed the anti-immigration Chinese Exclusion Act. Look for Elegant Arthur: The Musical—coming to Broadway soon!

Image from The Washington Post online: President Trump, center, listens during a dinner with European business leaders at the World Economic Forum in Davos. SAP CEO Bill McDermott, left, CEO of Seimens Joe Kaeser, second from right, and U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen. (Evan Vucci/AP)

Jacob Shallus engrossed the original copy of the United States Constitution

Jacob Shallus, assistant clerk for the Pennsylvania General Assembly, engrossed—wrote in script by hand—the original copy of the United States Constitution. He did so in about thirty-five hours, from the evening of Saturday, September 15, until early morning Monday, September 17, 1787, the day on which the Constitution was taken up by the Constitutional Convention, which was meeting in the old Pennsylvania State House in Philadelphia. (The building was later renamed Independence Hall because the Declaration of Independence had been adopted there in 1776.) Shallus was a son of German immigrants.

For his weekend labor, Shallus was paid $30, roughly $760 (about $22/hour) in today's money.

Image: Photo by Jeff Reed, the Rotunda for the Charters of Freedom in the National Archives building; guards flank the  Constitution engrossed by Shallus.

Iowa admitted to the union: December 28, 1847

170 years ago today: Iowa becomes the 29th state in the union.

The Iowa Territory was formed on July 4, 1838, and the vote for statehood came eight years later, in 1846. Only adult males at least 21 years of age were eligible to vote. The territory's total population was about 100,000 at the time, mostly in the eastern portion of the territory, that is, the portion nearest the Mississippi River. The vote was 9,442 in favor and 9,036 voting against statehood and its attendant taxation.

Slavery was banned in Iowa, so its statehood was tied to the legal compromise of the time, the Missouri Compromise, that said that for every new non-slave-holding state admitted into the union there should be a slave-holding state. Florida, with slavery legal within its borders, had become a state on March 3, 1845. Had that not occurred first, Iowa's admission to the union would have been, for all intents and purposes, impossible at the time.

Most of the western or Missouri River side of Iowa wouldn't be settled until after the American Civil War of 1861–1865, to which of all states, North or South, Iowa contributed the highest percentage of fighting-age men. To this day, the Iowa capitol displays many battle flags from Iowa regiments of the Civil War.

Click on the below map for an enlarged view in a separate browser window.

Iowa is the only US state bordered by river on two sides: the Mississippi forms Iowa's eastern border and the Missouri and its tributary the Big Sioux form Iowa's western border.

I was born in Cedar Falls, raised in Algona, graduated from high school in Newton, and from college in Orange City. Cedar Falls is named after the Cedar River. The name Algona was proposed by the wife of one of the first settlers of Kossuth County, Judge A. C. Call; in Algonquin it means "Algonquin waters." The origin of Newton's name is disputed. Orange City, settled mostly by Dutch immigrants, is named after the House of Orange-Nassau, an aristocratic dynasty founded in 1544 by William the Silent, leader of the Dutch War for Independence. 

Reformation 500

Five hundred years ago today the Protestant Reformation began and changed the world.

It didn't just change the church. It unleashed great social and political upheaval, too, including well as war.

And it's surprisingly relevant even today. In particular, the Western world's emphasis on individualism and the maturation of nationalism were significantly and irreversibly advanced by the Reformation. It also marked the advent of the printing press as a profoundly powerful tool for change. It even affected the evolution of art and music and the development of European languages. 

In fact, it's hard to imagine modernity arising in the Western world at all without the Reformation happening first.

The man who started the Reformation did so inadvertently. He had no idea what cataclysmic consequences would follow on from his actions.

He was Martin Luther (1483–1546), a monk and professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany. 

Luther is a complicated historic figure. He had a deep, molten anger that energized him much of the time. He was an anti-Semite and could be crass. He was willing to advocate warfare in defense of the Reformation's ideals. But he could be warm-hearted and witty, and he was ultimately motivated by concern of others, not himself.

On October 31, 1517, he posted on what was akin to the university's notice board a disputation aimed at fellow academics. Luther's disputation became known as the Ninety-five Theses. (It was in Latin as the vast majority of published work was at that time.)

The Ninety-five Theses called for reform of the Church, specifically the practice of selling indulgences, which were a bit like documents certifying by Church authority the forgiveness of someone's sins, usually the buyer's but sometimes those of someone else.

Luther was profoundly dismayed by indulgences.

To Luther, indulgences were grotesquely far removed from any kind of spiritual truth that could be found in the Bible, and they were a disgusting abuse of power on the part of the Church and specially the Pope.

He saw them as not merely misguided but abhorrently cynical. The money from their sale was primarily used for the construction of St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, the Vatican, something the vast majority of Christians would never see or benefit from in any way.

Luther's revulsion was not merely theological but pastoral. Which is to say that he worried about how indulgences and other Church practices endangered peoples' souls, caused them great anxiety about their chances of getting into heaven. There was also the practical concern that indulgences wasted the peoples' hard-earned money. For Luther, indulgences were a scam, a type of theft.

Luther had spent much of his life before the Reformation in psychological torment—true anguish—about whether or not he was going to get to heaven.

In time, he reached a deep conviction that no one could earn a place in heaven, such as through the purchases of indulgences or even charitable works.

Rather, only by the grace (mercy) of God did one gain eternal life in heaven with God after one dies. The pathway to heaven didn't depend on the strenuousness of one's efforts. No one could get to heaven that way anyway, because all individuals are inherently too sinful, completely unworthy of heaven. But God made eternal life available to everyone nonetheless, and did so through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Luther believed that this truth was plainly provided in the words of Bible. One of the many things he objected to about the Church of his day was how it seemed to obfuscate this direct message of the Bible ("the scriptures") by upholding Church traditions like keeping the Bible in Latin—a language average people did not know—instead of letting the Bible be published in a language of the common man and woman, such as German.

Luther’s ideas caught on and spread quickly throughout Europe thanks to a new technology, the printing press. Before the printing press, written works had to be copied by hand, which made them rare and expensive. But the printing press allowed large numbers of copies of written work to be quickly produced, easily transported, cheaply made, and, thus—when not made available for free—cheaply purchased.

As the ideas of the Reformation took root in many parts of Europe, especially in Northern Europe, and threatened traditional power structures, bloodshed followed, political dynasties were shaken, and countless thousands of people began to live their faith and think about God, themselves, and even their daily lives and their common language differently than Christians had for centuries.

The Reformation is more properly called the Protestant Reformation. Those Christians who like Luther rejected the authority of the Roman Catholic Church and forged ahead with various versions of Luther-inspired Christianity became known as Protestants—those who were in protest against the Church such as it had existed for centuries.

One of the hallmarks of Protestantism became its fractious nature. Different kinds of Protestantisms emerged soon after Luther's decisive act—indeed new ones still emerge now—and often came into intense conflict with each other, even violently so.

You can read more about some of the Reformation's consequences here.

Image: Martin Luther (1529) by the workshop of Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553), oil on panel, Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany.

#reformation500

The majority of Brits oppose a hard Brexit. They should act

The greater British majority are those opposing a hard Brexit, the Remain voters plus those desiring a soft Brexit. Stated in the inverse, British voters who back a hard Brexit are a minority of all voters and possibly a minority, albeit a large one, of all pro-Brexit voters. Therefore, the Conservative element represented by Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, fellow Cabinet minister Michael Gove, and Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, among others, represent at best a plurality view among the British electorate.

Theresa May's Government should recognize that and act accordingly.