Trego's Mountain Ear

"Serving North Lincoln County"

Tag: History

  • Failures in Leadership – Schrodinger’s Government

    This column is dedicated to our elected leaders who couldn’t lead a fraternity party to a free kegger. People who couldn’t lead a liberty party from the gangplank to the nearest saloon. People who are elected to a position and decide that gives them the power to insist on their own chosen illegalities.

    They range from school board members to the President of these United States. If you like Trump, then take a moment to remember the four years of Joe Biden “leadership.” Even if you don’t like Trump, think back on Slow Joe. The man kept being elected by Delaware – 2 years on the county council, then 36 years in the US Senate, 8 years as Vice-President, culminating in a 4 year debacle as President. He epitomized the Peter Principle – he spent 48 years in elected offices that were above his level of competence. Being elected so many times, with so little ability, is a testimony to his drive for power and personality.

    While Biden found that the small state of Delaware matched his limited talents and boundless ego, we have other spots that match irresponsible voters with incompetent or unmotivated candidates. In some cases, we limit the candidate pool – I’ll mention the County School Superintendent position, only because I spent 5 years with the Soup’s office next to mine. There were varying degrees of competence in the three that I knew from our proximity and the two I worked with as a board member. Those five examples are enough to give me some ideas.

    I’ve seen a new phrase – “Schrodinger’s Government” that describes a system caught between competence and incompetence, between legitimate and illegitimate, between authoritative and incompetent. Those that are in power support “Schrodinger’s Government” as representative and democratic. Those who are out of power see moral flaws and illegitimacy that deserve only protest and resistance. The term “Schrodinger’s Government” is a takeoff on Schrodinger’s Cat – a quantum physics experiment where the cat has an equal probability of being alive or dead until the box that contains it is opened.

    Back to the County Soup – the position requires a teaching certificate and three years experience teaching public schools. That requirement leads to a shallow pool of candidates – much like Delaware where the state is a little over half the size of Lincoln County. Limiting the candidate pool limits the potential for excellence, and leads to “Schrodinger’s Government.” There are some damn poor teachers who have three years experience and a license.

    Minneapolis has been a case study in “Schrodinger’s Government,” showing the man who was the candidate for VP just 15 months ago crossing political swords with the man who was duly elected President. Thing is, Minneapolis is more the norm than the exception – let me describe “Schrodinger’s Government” in Lincoln County, where it has existed for years.

    First, let’s look at the county’s geography: when Lincoln County was carved out of Flathead County, the idea was to develop a geographically connected county – where all of the communities were in the same (Kootenai) watershed, and all save two were served by the railroad (and those two had some creative school district boundaries that allowed them some railroad tax base). But good and equitable ideas only last so long as our elected representatives vote to maintain them. And Libby Dam came along to play hell with the county’s planned geographic integrity.

    If we look at Lincoln County’s three largest towns (and high schools) we see that the Libby area has almost half the population but about a third of the tax base. Small wonder why the north county folks, with nearly half the tax base but only a third of the population view Libby much like Alberta’s separatist movement sees Ottawa. Our founding fathers were bothered by taxation without representation – here we see the problems of taxation by the representatives from a more populous area, compounded with the fact that the location of the county seat means most of the elected officials live in that district. It’s a geographically smaller version of the “Game of Thrones.” Schrodinger’s Government.

    In the north county, the County High School was located in Eureka. Eureka’s elementary board saw that, by unifying the high school district with their own elementary district they would be able to tax an area that they had no intention of serving. In 1988, the Eureka and Rexford school districts voted to unify the districts. They were unified, and the County Superintendent told them to change the name of Lincoln County High School (and she left the office and the county, with no successor who would enforce that). They didn’t change the name, but they did take over the high school district – and added taxable land (mostly railroad) that they had no intention of serving. Schrodinger’s Government by design. To be in keeping with the laws, they could have named it Eureka Unified, or even Lincoln Not a County High School. I suppose they figure that they stole it fair and square. With the County Soup absent, they created Schrodinger’s Government.

    Iran shows Schrodinger’s Government at work. 47 years ago, 98 percent of the population voted to have an Islamic Republic. Now, that Islamic Republic has lost nearly all connection with the Iranian people – well over half of the mosques have been burned, some of the vocal Iranians are calling themselves Persians and calling for a return to Zoroastrianism. And their Supreme Leader is announcing the protestors as “Enemies of God.” Schrodinger’s Government. I give thanks that I have never lived under a theocracy. Even if the regime is overthrown, Iran will have decades of quiet murders as old scores are settled under a new regime.

    To our north – Alberta and Quebec both have separatist movements that, if successful, will scuttle Canada. You don’t get secessionist movements this visible without Schrodinger’s Government.

    One of my grad students enjoyed telling me that libertarians should never be elected because they believe that government doesn’t work. That may have been an indictment for seeing things as they are.

  • A Nation of Immigrants

    The thing that makes a nation of immigrants successful is getting high quality immigrants. I recall a quotation without an author – “The coward never started, the weak died on the way, only the strong survived.” When I hunted an author, I found only a recent book – so I’ll stay with author unknown. In a very real, but incomplete way, it describes immigration to America.

    My mother-in-law came to the US from Germany – and went to Germany in WWII as a Soviet physician (specifically a psychiatrist). She came in fairly broke – but with paperwork attesting to her education and experience. Von Braun came in with some questionable associations with the Nazis, but he was one of the world’s top rocket men (admittedly, the Soviets got the best guys on rocket fuel). The idea at the time was to pick very well qualified immigrants. Einstein was a German-born Jew of Ashkenazi heritage. Enrico Fermi, born in Rome, a naturalized American citizen. I still have a screwdriver that belonged to Stanislaus, and a statue from his wife – Polish peasants, they brought skills in welding, machining and sewing with them through Ellis Island. The US gave extra points for coming from the right hand side of the bell curve.

    And immigration changed our ethnicity – by 1820, the majority of immigrants from Britain were Irish. With the potato famine, America became more Irish – then by the end of the 19th Century, increasing numbers from the region we know as Germany. The concept of the melting pot. Those early Irish immigrants came with strong backs and a work ethic. They may not have been the most intellectually gifted – but their work ethic placed them on the right hand side of the bell curve.

    There’s an irony in looking at the side of the bell curve on which the immigrant starts – the standard bell curve is always shown with the lower numbers (below average) on the left and the higher numbers on the right. When we had limited numbers of immigrants, we gave preference to immigrants from the far right side of the bell curve.

    I don’t like the Right/Left descriptors of political stances, largely because I see little difference between Hitler’s management and Stalin’s. Yet when I look at immigration policies that will improve or harm the makeup of our country, the extreme right of the bell curve – be it intelligence, education, professional qualifications, health – was the spot that got the prospective immigrant points for entry.

    It was in the southwest where I encountered an immigrant who had crossed the river during the Villa days, about 75 years before I met him. He was there for his great-granddaughter’s graduation with an associate of applied sciences in Civil Tech. I had coached her through Statics and Dynamics, and she insisted that I was the reason she graduated. This little old man – barely five feet, and in his nineties explained to me how wonderful the United States is: “Here, my granddaughter is a college graduate. That would never have happened if I had stayed in Mexico.” We don’t think often enough of how the opportunities for success are so much greater in the US than most other countries.

  • Voting Yourself In

    After the shah was overthrown, the Iranians had a choice. They could vote for a monarchy or they could vote for an Islamic republic. The vote came out for an Islamic Republic, and it’s on the 47th year.

    We’re seeing some major demonstrations as the Iranians work at getting out of the Islamic Republic. The problem is probably written larger there – the 75 cent word to describe the Islamic Republic is theocracy. We’ve heard the Ayatollah denouncing the protesters as ‘Enemies of God.’ In our British history, King James (yep-him of the King James Version) was the last Brit King who totally believed that he ruled by divine right.

    One of the problems of democracy is that you can vote yourself into something you have to shoot your way out of. Forget the dangling preposition – I really don’t know a way to say it better and more grammatically correct. The problem with shooting your way out is that authoritative regimes try to keep a monopoly on the guns. The Iranians – people whose parents and grandparents voted them into the Islamic Republic – want out. The government has the guns.

    We are not always offered clear, good choices in an election. The record shows that 98% of the voting Iranians chose the Islamic Republic. Then they knew of the problems with the Shah. Now they know the problems associated with the Islamic Republic. They’re trying to demonstrate their way out because they can’t vote or shoot their way out. Their choice, though they did not realize it, was between a crap salad and a crap sandwich.

    We can’t sneer at their 1979 choice – out past three elections have only been a choice of the lesser evil. I voted against Hilary Clinton. I voted against Joe Biden. At the bottom, my decision was made on the second amendment – push comes to shove, our founding fathers wrote the ability to shoot your way out into our constitution. The people we see demonstrating and dying in Iran don’t have that right. Few nations do.

    Should the Iranian people be successful, I have a hunch we will see a return to Zoroastrianism. Two thirds of Iran’s mosques are closed. The experience of living in an Islamic Republic seems to have turned off the appeal of Islam. Before the Iranians took to the streets, they quit going to the mosques and answering the call to prayer.

    You can vote yourself into a government that forces you to shoot your way out. James Madison is credited with writing the second amendment. So far we haven’t needed it – but we’ve seen a lot of attempts (and some of them successful) to infringe on the right to bear arms. The second amendment is now the strongest it has been in my lifetime – because of a man who received my vote but not my support in 2016 and the people he appointed to the Supreme Court.

    Thinking about the Iranians, again I remember Terence McSwiney and hope his view is correct:


  • Thus Spake Zarathustra – One More Time

    I’ve never before been tempted to steal a title from Nietzsche – but the furor in Minnesota, the street riots in Iran, the raid in Venezuela, and who knows what else may occur before I post this.

    It applies more to the rioting in Iran – Zarathustra founded Zoroastrianism – the Persian religion before Arab conquerors brought Islam into the country that we know as Iraq. The present rebellion is symbolized by attractive women setting photographs of Supreme Leader Khamenei on fire, then lighting a cigarette from the flaming photo. Apparently, its illegal to burn Khamenei’s photo, and Iranian women really aren’t allowed to smoke. The guy on the media said this was becoming a symbolic part of the revolution – and its possible that they’re right.

    I didn’t get into reading of Persia and Zoroastrianism from reading Nietzsche. The author who dragged me into the topic was a brit poet named Fitzgerald, who loosely translated the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Khayyam had a verse that motivated me to read of both Islam and Zoroaster:

    Myself when young did eagerly frequent
    Doctor and Saint, and heard great Argument
    About it and about: but evermore
    Came out by the same Door as in I went.

    And this I know: whether the one True Light,
    Kindle to Love, or Wrath consume me quite,
    One Glimpse of It within the Tavern caught
    Better than in the Temple lost outright.

    Oh Thou who didst with Pitfall and with Gin
    Beset the Road I was to wander in,
    Thou wilt not with Predestination round
    Enmesh me, and impute my Fall to Sin?

    Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
    And who with Eden didst devise the Snake;
    For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
    Is blacken’d, Man’s Forgiveness give—and take    !

    So I read of religions – and, like Khayyam, usually found myself walking out the same door as I walked in. Islam lacked appeal, excepting the Sufi teachings. Zoroastrianism was written up as an essentially dead precursor to Judaism and Christianity – yet a little more research showed that it still lives in the religion of Yazidi. Big point of this is that Zoroastrianism still exists among the Yazidi and the Parsees (India) and there are a whole lot of fire temples still operational (well, 150 in India, anyway). Not a worship of fire – but the idea that fire is a symbol of cleaning, of ritual purity, and that a sacrifice through fire leads to happiness.

    The talking heads may be right. The burning photographs that light cigarettes may be the symbol on their own – but Persia spent a long time as a center of knowledge, and Zoroastrianism did stress fire as a cleanser. Thus spake Zarathustra. I even stole Nietzsche’s end line.

  • The Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb

    I hope everyone is familiar with Robert Service – the man who wrote “The Cremation of Sam McGee” and “The Shooting of Dan McGrew.” Watching the film of Chavez’ tomb in Caracas blowing up last weekend brought another Robert Service poem to mind. It was written in 1930 – and is reputed to be the reason his poetry was never translated into Russian – kind of like Kipling losing any chance of becoming poet laureate of England after Queen Victoria read his poem “The Widow at Windsor.” The Ballad of Lenin’s Tomb is readily available online – and I’m fairly sure its in the public domain – so until someone writes a ballad of Hugo Chavez’ Tomb, we have this Robert Service poem to remind of us the immortality of communist leaders:

    The Ballad Of Lenins Tomb

    By Robert William Service

     This is the yarn he told me
 As we sat in Casey's Bar,
 That Rooshun mug who scammed from the jug
 In the Land of the Crimson Star;
 That Soviet guy with the single eye,
 And the face like a flaming scar.

Where Lenin lies the red flag flies, and the rat-grey workers wait
To tread the gloom of Lenin's Tomb, where the Comrade lies in state.
With lagging pace they scan his face, so weary yet so firm;
For years a score they've laboured sore to save him from the worm.
The Kremlin walls are grimly grey, but Lenin's Tomb is red,
And pilgrims from the Sour Lands say: "He sleeps and is not dead."
Before their eyes in peace he lies, a symbol and a sign,
And as they pass that dome of glass they see - a God Divine.
So Doctors plug him full of dope, for if he drops to dust,
So will collapse their faith and hope, the whole combine will bust.
But say, Tovarich; hark to me . . . a secret I'll disclose,
For I did see what none did see; I know what no one knows.

I was a Cheko terrorist - Oh I served the Soviets well,
Till they put me down on the bone-yard list, for the fear that I might tell;
That I might tell the thing I saw, and that only I did see,
They held me in quod with a firing squad to make a corpse of me.
But I got away, and here today I'm telling my tale to you;
Though it may sound weird, by Lenin's beard, so help me God it's true.
I slouched across that great Red Square, and watched the waiting line.
The mongrel sons of Marx were there, convened to Lenin's shrine;
Ten thousand men of Muscovy, Mongol and Turkoman,
Black-bonnets of the Aral Sea and Tatars of Kazan.
Kalmuck and Bashkir, Lett and Finn, Georgian, Jew and Lapp,
Kirghiz and Kazakh, crowding in to gaze at Lenin's map.
Aye, though a score of years had run I saw them pause and pray,
As mourners at the Tomb of one who died but yesterday.
I watched them in a bleary daze of bitterness and pain,
For oh, I missed the cheery blaze of vodka in my brain.
I stared, my eyes were hypnotized by that saturnine host,
When with a start that shook my heart I saw - I saw a ghost.
As in foggèd glass I saw him pass, and peer at me and grin -
A man I knew, a man I slew, Prince Boris Mazarin.

Now do not think because I drink I love the flowing bowl;
But liquor kills remorse and stills the anguish of the soul.
And there's so much I would forget, stark horrors I have seen,
Faces and forms that haunt me yet, like shadows on a screen.
And of these sights that mar my nights the ghastliest by far
Is the death of Boris Mazarin, that soldier of the Czar.

A mighty nobleman was he; we took him by surprise;
His mother, son and daughters three we slew before his eyes.
We tortured him, with jibes and threats; then mad for glut of gore,
Upon our reeking bayonets we nailed him to the door.
But he defied us to the last, crying: "O carrion crew!
I'd die with joy could I destroy a hundred dogs like you."
I thrust my sword into his throat; the blade was gay with blood;
We flung him to his castle moat, and stamped him in its mud.
That mighty Cossack of the Don was dead with all his race....
And now I saw him coming on, dire vengeance in his face.
(Or was it some fantastic dream of my besotted brain?)
He looked at me with eyes a-gleam, the man whom I had slain.
He looked and bade me follow him; I could not help but go;
I joined the throng that passed along, so sorrowful and slow.
I followed with a sense of doom that shadow gaunt and grim;
Into the bowels of the Tomb I followed, followed him.

The light within was weird and dim, and icy cold the air;
My brow was wet with bitter sweat, I stumbled on the stair.
I tried to cry; my throat was dry; I sought to grip his arm;
For well I knew this man I slew was there to do us harm.
Lo! he was walking by my side, his fingers clutched my own,
This man I knew so well had died, his hand was naked bone.
His face was like a skull, his eyes were caverns of decay . . .
And so we came to the crystal frame where lonely Lenin lay.

Without a sound we shuffled round> I sought to make a sign,
But like a vice his hand of ice was biting into mine.
With leaden pace around the place where Lenin lies at rest,
We slouched, I saw his bony claw go fumbling to his breast.
With ghastly grin he groped within, and tore his robe apart,
And from the hollow of his ribs he drew his blackened heart. . . .
Ah no! Oh God! A bomb, a BOMB! And as I shrieked with dread,
With fiendish cry he raised it high, and . . . swung at Lenin's head.
Oh I was blinded by the flash and deafened by the roar,
And in a mess of bloody mash I wallowed on the floor.
Then Alps of darkness on me fell, and when I saw again
The leprous light 'twas in a cell, and I was racked with pain;
And ringèd around by shapes of gloom, who hoped that I would die;
For of the crowd that crammed the Tomb the sole to live was I.
They told me I had dreamed a dream that must not be revealed,
But by their eyes of evil gleam I knew my doom was sealed.

I need not tell how from my cell in Lubianka gaol,
I broke away, but listen, here's the point of all my tale. . . .
Outside the "Gay Pay Oo" none knew of that grim scene of gore;
They closed the Tomb, and then they threw it open as before.
And there was Lenin, stiff and still, a symbol and a sign,
And rancid races come to thrill and wonder at his Shrine;
And hold the thought: if Lenin rot the Soviets will decay;
And there he sleeps and calm he keeps his watch and ward for aye.
Yet if you pass that frame of glass, peer closely at his phiz,
So stern and firm it mocks the worm, it looks like wax . . . and is.
They tell you he's a mummy - don't you make that bright mistake:
I tell you - he's a dummy; aye, a fiction and a fake.
This eye beheld the bloody bomb that bashed him on the bean.
I heard the crash, I saw the flash, yet . . . there he lies serene.
And by the roar that rocked the Tomb I ask: how could that be?
But if you doubt that deed of doom, just go yourself and see.
You think I'm mad, or drunk, or both . . . Well, I don't care a damn:
I tell you this: their Lenin is a waxen, show-case SHAM.

 Such was the yarn he handed me,
 Down there in Casey's Bar,
 That Rooshun bug with the scrambled mug
 From the land of the Commissar.
 It may be true, I leave it you
 To figger out how far.

  • Starting Montana

    There are many spots in history where you can start Montana’s story – I’m looking for the spot where the Montana Attitude starts. Leslie Fiedler, in his 1949 essay about the Montana Face touched around it – but missed the moment and the incident.

    Our origin includes Meriwether Lewis (whose Apron resides with Montana’s Grand Lodge in Helena) and Colter’s Run – John Colter, who mustered out from the Corps of Discovery early, who stayed in the mountains to begin the beaver trade, and who left Montana in 1810 and died a couple of years after returning to civilization (well, St. Louis, Missouri).

    Even in grade school, I learned that the Custer legend didn’t pan out – but Custer barely made it into Montana before screwing up at the Little Big Horn. But his poor decision occurred after the Montana perspective began to develop.

    Go back in history – and remember that Lewis and Clark passed through, Colter expanded on what they had mapped, but in the middle of the War Between the States, men from both North and South moved to Montana. And, in 1863, men from both sides came together for the funeral of William Bell. Bell, dying of natural causes, asked that he might receive a Masonic funeral. Seventy-six of his lodge brothers showed up for that funeral, and the realization hit, that while the criminals held the Sheriff’s office, they had the organization with a group of fraternity brothers that they could trust. (The seventy-six attending the funeral, plus the deceased William Bell totaled 77 – the final number of the Vigilantes 3-7-77. The blending of North and South wasn’t free of strain – Bozeman still has two separate Masonic Lodges, one originally formed of Confederates, the second Unionists.)

    At any rate, the Montana Attitude begins with the organization of the Vigilantes – who, in a couple of months, organized, hanged the crooked sheriff, and restored law and order. With an origin like that, a fundamental mistrust of government – as personified by Sheriff Henry Plummer – and the willingness to confront that government, is kind of engrained in the collective psyche of Montana.

    The next incident occur with Montana’s Acting Territorial Governor – Thomas Francis Meagher. Before President Andrew Johnson sent him to Montana, Meagher had used a horsewhip on an editor who criticized him (in New York, as I recall). As Montana’s acting governor, he threatened to repeat that behavior on the editor of the Virginia City paper. The editor responded with the invitation “Pistols for two and coffee for one?” I’m not real certain as to the date, but obviously it was before July 1, 1867, when Meagher disappeared from the deck of a steamboat at Fort Benton.

    While Meagher, who was appointed Territorial Secretary, filled the position of Governor, he also ran up the territory’s debt to pay the militia – I recall reading of that debt being recently paid off shortly before I graduated grade school (though I may have been reading an old book).

    In those three formative years, Henry Plummer set an example that made Montanans skeptical about trusting local government, while Governor Meagher showed us that state government was willing to incur a debt that would take most of the next century to pay off, as well as attempting to censor the press. I still kind of like Meagher, but if he was pushed off the steamboat, the perp may have had the idea that he deserved it. There’s a reason why Montanans tend to mistrust government – though I’m not sure today’s journalists would be ready to send the “Pistols for two and coffee for one?” response to the governor.