Lex Anteinternet: Some feral threads in the fabric.

Lex Anteinternet: Some feral threads in the fabric.: 

Some feral threads in the fabric.

I'm not going to take this too far, and you definitely could, but a couple of odds and ends I've run across recently.

One is this Agrarian blog I recently located:

Foothill Agrarian

There are only handful of really worthwhile agrarian blogs around.  That's at least better than the situation with the distributist situation, where there's nothing worthwhile whatsoever.  Of the handful that are out there, the two best ones are linked in here.  A third one that is also worthwhile (which is a successor to two prior blogs, just as this blog also is), is also linked in, but it's not quite as good.  I'll do a thread on them some other time, or on all of these together. A fourth one would get a link for its actual agrarian posts, but it descends into "Southern Agrarianism" of the Lost Cause variety, and we're not going there.  Nope, no way.

Anyhow, I thought that this entry by an agrarian California sheep rancher, who is an adult entrant into hunting, really interesting.  He's also a self professed agrarian.

Persistence

We've posted a lot about hunting here, from the prospective of the nearly feral agrarian who has been a hunter his entire life.  It's interesting to see some similar views come about from the thoughtful agrarian adult who came to it late.

I haven't made it all the way through the back entries on Foothill Agrarian. Not by a long shot, but I was also struck by this entry:

Coming to Terms with Being Part-Time

This is a little like reading my own thoughts.  Indeed, this guy is just about the same age as me (I'm a little older), and he's a rancher, not a "homesteader", which anymore conveys something else, and frankly something less serious, or perhaps less realistic.  I'll be looking forward to perusing his prior entries.

I'm glad I found his blog.

Here's the other thing that caught my eye.

Helsinki says no meat will be served, single-use cutlery used at its events

This quite frankly is a deceptive headline, but that's how it generally reads, even in English language editions of Finnish newspapers.  What it really means is that the City of Helsinki will be changing what it serves at official state and municipal functions, and venues it owns, and it actually still will be serving meat.

What it will serve is local fish and also local game.  We don't see wild game as a restaurant item much in the US, and indeed its subject to very strict statutory provisions everywhere.  Why peole make the distinction between fish and "meat" baffles me, but they have here.

This is being done, maybe, by Helsinki (its drawing a lot of criticism) to reduce, it claims, its carbon footprint.  There's a certain "m'eh" quality to this as frankly the concept that bovines are farting the plant into a climate crisis is not really well thought out.  Humans are omnivores and meat is part of our diet, including meat that is raised by farmers and ranchers.

Having said that, I've long been an advocate for getting your own meat directly, and therefore I'm somewhat applauding Helsinki here, probably surprisingly to those who might know me. They're emphasizing local fish, which is something that people of that city probably mostly subsisted on until the mid 20th Century. And hunting wild game has always been a big part of Finnish culture, and still is.

Now, I'm not advocating for what Helsinki did, and I suspect that the Woke city counsel of the city, or whatever its administering body is, won't have this in place long.  I'm a stockman and I'm hugely skeptical of the cow fart accusations on the climate.  Depending upon how cattle are fed, this is not the problem its made out to be, and so to the extent its a problem, and there's always been ungulates around all over, it can be addressed.  But I find it really surprising that in 2021 I'll occasionally find even ranchers and farmers who don't hunt.

People should get their meat locally if they can, and included in that, is getting it directly from the field.  Its healthy, and honest, and connects you with reality in a way that going to the stocked shelves at Sam's Club doesn't.

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PR...

Lex Anteinternet: Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PR...:   

Blog Mirror: KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PROTECTOR

 

KARELIAN BEAR DOGS: HUNTER TURNED PROTECTOR

Lex Anteinternet: BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new st...

Lex Anteinternet: BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new st...:  

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

 This major public access story hit the news here Thursday.

BLM acquisition unlocks thousands of acres, new stretch of North Platte near Casper

I'm quite familiar with this stretch of property. As a kid, before the recent owners who owned transferred it, I used to hunt part of it.  I never asked for permission, even though I'm sure I should have.  In those days, in the 70s, we asked for permission a lot less, and it was granted by fiat a lot more.

This is a real boon to sportsmen.  It'll open up miles of river to fishing, and miles and miles to hunting.  I've passed by deer and doves in this area a lot as I didn't have permission to go where they were.  Now I'll be able to, although I hope the BLM makes as much of this roadless as possible.

I hope they also lease it out for grazing.

Indeed, I have some mixed feelings about this as I really hate to see a local ranch go out of production.  The family that owned it had started off as sheepmen in Johnson County and moved down to Natrona County when their land was bought for coal production.  Now they'll just be out of agriculture entirely, and I really hate to see that, even though I'm glad to see this didn't go to out of state interest.  Indeed, what occurred is more in keeping with the purpose of the original Federal land programs, including the Homestead Act, than what often does occur with land sales now days.

I will note that, of course, in the age of the internet this of course resulted in moronic comments, including the blisteringly ignorant comment that its somehow unconstitutional for the Federal Government to own land. That comment is so dense that it should disqualify a person from going onto land in general until some education occurs.

Lex Anteinternet: Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

Lex Anteinternet: Yellowstone. A really radical idea.: 

Yellowstone. A really radical idea.

A really radical idea that won't happen, but maybe should.

There have been really horrific floods, as we all know, in Yellowstone National Park. Roads in the northern part of the park may be closed for the rest of the summer.  Here's a National Park Service item on it:

Updates

• Aerial assessments conducted Monday, June 13, by Yellowstone National Park show major damage to multiple sections of road between the North Entrance (Gardiner, Montana), Mammoth Hot Springs, Lamar Valley and Cooke City, Montana, near the Northeast Entrance.
• Many sections of road in these areas are completely gone and will require substantial time and effort to reconstruct.
• The National Park Service will make every effort to repair these roads as soon as possible; however, it is probable that road sections in northern Yellowstone will not reopen this season due to the time required for repairs.
• To prevent visitors from being stranded in the park if conditions worsen, the park in coordination with Yellowstone National Park Lodges made the decision to have all visitors move out of overnight accommodations (lodging and campgrounds) and exit the park.
• All entrances to Yellowstone National Park remain temporarily CLOSED while the park waits for flood waters to recede and can conduct evaluations on roads, bridges and wastewater treatment facilities to ensure visitor and employee safety.
• There will be no inbound visitor traffic at any of the five entrances into the park, including visitors with lodging and camping reservations, until conditions improve and park infrastructure is evaluated.
• The park’s southern loop appears to be less impacted than the northern roads and teams will assess damage to determine when opening of the southern loop is feasible. This closure will extend minimally through next weekend (June 19).
• Due to the northern loop being unavailable for visitors, the park is analyzing how many visitors can safely visit the southern loop once it’s safe to reopen. This will likely mean implementation of some type of temporary reservation system to prevent gridlock and reduce impacts on park infrastructure.
• At this time, there are no known injuries nor deaths to have occurred in the park as a result of the unprecedented flooding. 
• Effective immediately, Yellowstone’s backcountry is temporarily closed while crews assist campers (five known groups in the northern range) and assess damage to backcountry campsites, trails and bridges.
• The National Park Service, surrounding counties and states of Montana and Wyoming are working with the park’s gateway communities to evaluate flooding impacts and provide immediate support to residents and visitors.
• Water levels are expected to recede today in the afternoon; however, additional flood events are possible through this weekend.

Here's an idea.

Don't rebuild the roads.

For years, there have been complaints about how overcrowded Yellowstone National Park has become.  A combination of a tourist economy and high mobility, and frankly the American inability to grasp that the country has become overpopulated, had contributed to that.  For years there have been suggestions that something needed to be done about that.

Maybe what is needed is. .. nothing.

Well, nothing now, so to speak.

Yellowstone was the nation's first National Park.  It was created at a time when park concepts, quite frankly, were different from they are now.   Created in 1872, its establishment was in fact visionary, and it did grasp in part that the nation's frontier was closing, even though the creation of the park came a fully four years prior to the Battle of Little Big Horn.  There was, at the time of its creation, a sort of lamentation that the end of the Frontier was in sight, and the nation was going to become one of farms and cities.

Nobody saw cities like they exist now, however, and nobody grasped that the day would come when agricultural land would be the province of the rich, and that homesteading would go from a sort of desperate act to something that people would cite to, in the case of their ancestors, as some sort of basis for moral superiority.  Things are much different today than they were then.

Indeed, in some ways, the way the park is viewed is a bit bipolar.  To some, particularly those willing to really rough it, Yellowstone is a sort of giant wilderness area.  To others, it's a sort of theme park. 

The appreciation of the need to preserve wilderness existed then, but what that meant wasn't really understood.  The park was very much wilderness at first, and some things associated with wilderness went on within it, and of course still do.  Early camping parties travelled there.  People fished there, and still do.  Hunting was prohibited early on, which had more to do with the 19th Century decline in wildlife due to market hunting than it did anything else.  This has preserved a sort of bipolarism in and of itself, as fishing is fish-hunting, just as bird hunting is fowling. There's no reason in fact that Yellowstone should have not been opened back up to hunting some time during the last quarter-century, but it is not as just as the park is wilderness to young adventurers from the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, and hearty back country folks of all ages, it's also a big public zoo for people from Newark or Taipei.  

Since 1872, all sorts of additional parks have been created. Some are on the Yellowstone model, such as Yosemite.  Others are historical sites such as Gettysburg or Ft. Laramie.  All, or certainly all that I've seen, are of value.

But they don't all have the same value.

Much of Yellowstone's value is in its rugged wilderness.  Some cite to the geothermal features of the park, but that's only a small portion of it.  And for that reason, much of Yellowstone today would make more sense existing as a Wilderness Area under the Wilderness Act of 1964, the act that helps preserve the west in a very real way, and which western politicians, who often live lives much different than actual westerners, love to hate.

A chance exists here to bring back Yellowstone into that mold, which it was intended in part to be fro the very onset, and which many wish it was, or imagine it to be, today.

Don't rebuilt the roads.

That would in fact mean the northern part of the park would revert to wilderness, truly.  And it means that many fewer people would go to the park in general.  And it would hurt the tourist communities in the northern areas, and even in the southern areas, as the diminished access to the park would mean that the motorized brigade of American and International tourists wouldn't go there, as they wouldn't want to be too far from their air-conditioned vehicles.

But that's exactly what should be done.

Lex Anteinternet: In Memoriam: Thomas McIntyre.

Lex Anteinternet: In Memoriam: Thomas McIntyre.:

In Memoriam: Thomas McIntyre.

For those who follow this blog somewhat, you might have noted that in recent months there were a lot of comments from "Tom" "in Sheridan".

You may also have noticed that his last comment came when I got out of the hospital recently.  His thoughtful post stated:

Three years ago, I had a surgery and four weeks n the hospital while the incision healed.

The hospital really pushed me to head to Casper to do the recuperation, but I could not understand the idea that I would want to be 140 miles from home to essentially lie in a bed. (This was pre-Covid, so patient space was not a consideration; at least I couldn't see that as a reason.) In any case I received excellent care right in the hometown. I think you know that the friends who visit you are the true ones.

Matthew 25:34-40
King James Version

34 Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world:

35 For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in:

36 Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

37 Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink?

38 When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee?

39 Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

40 And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

Tom
Sheridan, WY

Tom from Sheridan was Thomas McIntyre, a writer and big game hunter who lived in Sheridan.  The reason for his sudden departure is his sudden departure from this life.  Tom has passed on at age 70.  He left us on November 3.

I'm indebted to the Stephen Bodio blog, linked in at the side as one of the outdoor blogs we follow, for posting the news.   Tom commented so frequently that the sudden cessation of his comments made me wonder if I'd said something to offend him somehow, or if he just realized that he'd be in the category of "my betters" and just chose to pursue more worthwhile pursuits.

Tom's entry onto our pages here was due to a recommendation from another reader, I don't know who.  He sure improved the blog with his comments, and on one occasion improved a post by correcting some of my writing.  He was an obviously highly educated and thoughtful man.  

He was also a big game hunter, and writer on the topic.  I'd been looking forward to a book he was finishing on wild cattle, which apparently he did finish before his death.  The book is entitled Thunder Without Rain.  He quoted a few snippets of it here in some of his comments. Tom and I, therefore, shared that vocation, hunter, although he is much more traveled than I ever will be.  My only experience with cattle is with the domestic kind, which are of course occasionally wild.

Tom and I were also co-religious, although in his comments here he was vague on the topic.  I had the sense, although I didn't know him personally, that something had caused him to become nonobservant in our faith, although he obviously retained a deep knowledge of the faith and its traditions.  In response to a question of mine, he'd only noted that if Mass was still being held in the catacombs, he'd be there.  I noticed on his Sheridan funeral home listing, there was a short comment from "Fr. Jim", so he was obviously in contact somehow with a man of the Catholic cloth somewhere.  Whatever his status was, and it wasn't clear, I hope and pray that he was reconciled in the end and that this cheerful man passed with the peace he clearly daily exhibited.

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish...

Lex Anteinternet: Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish...: 

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...A few observations.

A few odds and ends on this story:

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...:   Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel Yup.  And. . .  The early Middle Pleistocene site of Ge...

By most reckonings, the humans, and they were humans, who were grilling up the carp were not members of our species, Homo sapiens.

They likely would have been Homo Heidelbergensis or Homo Erectus, the former having at one time been regarded as a subspecies of the latter.

No matter, these people were a lot closer to you than you might imagine.  Their brain capacity, for one thing, is just about the same as modern humans at 1200 cc.  FWIW, the brain capacity of archaic Homo Sapiens was actually larger than that of current people, members of the species Homo Sapien Sapien. Our current brain sizes are pretty big, in relative terms, at about 1400 cc, although Neanderthals' were bigger, at 1500cc.  

About the "archaic" members of our species, it's been said that they're not regarded their own species as they have been "admitted to membership in our species because of their almost modern-sized brains, but set off as ‘archaic' because of their primitive looking cranial morphology".¹  Having said that, some people say, no, those are Homo Heidlebergensis.  It can be pretty difficult to tell, actually, and as been noted:

One of the greatest challenges facing students of human evolution comes at the tail end of the Homo erectus span. After Homo erectus, there is little consensus about what taxonomic name to give the hominins that have been found. As a result, they are assigned the kitchen-sink label of “archaic Homo sapiens.”

Tattersall (2007) notes that the Kabwe skull bears more than a passing resemblance to one of the most prominent finds in Europe, the Petralona skull from Greece. In turn, as I mentioned above, the Petralona skull is very similar to one of the most complete skulls from Atapuerca, SH 5, and at least somewhat similar to the Arago skull.

Further, it is noted that the Bodo cranium from Africa shares striking similarities to the material from Gran Dolina (such as it is). This suggests that, as was the case with Homo erectus, there is widespread genetic homogeneity in these populations. Given the time depth involved, it is likely that there was considerable and persistent gene flow between them. Tattersall (2007), argues that, since the first example of this hominin form is represented by the Mauer mandible, the taxonomic designation Homo heidelbergensis should be used to designate these forms. This would stretch the limits of this taxon, however, since it would include the later forms from Africa as well. If there was considerable migration and hybridization between these populations, it could be argued that a single taxon makes sense. However, at present, there is no definitive material evidence for such migration, or widespread agreement on calling all these hominins anything other than “archaic Homo sapiens.”²

 Regarding our first ancestors, of our species, appearance:

When comparing Homo erectus, archaic Homo sapiens, and anatomically modern Homo sapiens across several anatomical features, one can see quite clearly that archaic Homo sapiens are intermediate in their physical form. This follows the trends first seen in Homo erectus for some features and in other features having early, less developed forms of traits more clearly seen in modern Homo sapiens. For example, archaic Homo sapiens trended toward less angular and higher skulls than Homo erectus but had skulls notably not as short and globular in shape and with a less developed forehead than anatomically modern Homo sapiens. archaic Homo sapiens had smaller brow ridges and a less-projecting face than Homo erectus and slightly smaller teeth, although incisors and canines were often about as large as that of Homo erectus. Archaic Homo sapiens also had a wider nasal aperture, or opening for the nose, as well as a forward-projecting midfacial region, known as midfacial prognathism. The occipital bone often projected and the cranial bone was of intermediate thickness, somewhat reduced from Homo erectus but not nearly as thin as that of anatomically modern Homo sapiens. The postcrania remained fairly robust, as well. To identify a set of features that is unique to the group archaic Homo sapiens is a challenging task, due to both individual variation—these developments were not all present to the same degree in all individuals—and the transitional nature of their features. Neanderthals will be the exception, as they have several clearly unique traits that make them notably different from modern Homo sapiens as well as their closely related archaic cousins.³

Well, what that tells us overall is that we were undergoing some changes during this period of the Pleistocene, that geologic period lasting from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago.

And that, dear reader, points out that we're a Pleistocene mammal.

It also points out that we don't have yet a really good grasp as to when our species really fully came about.  We think we know what the preceding species was, but we're not super sure when we emerged from it.  And of course, we didn't really emerge, but just kind of rolled along mother and father to children.

Which tells us that Heidlebergensis may have been pretty much like us, really.

Just not as photogenic.

On that, it's also been recently noted that the best explanation for the disappearance of the Neanderthals, which are now widely regarded as a separate species that emerged also from Heidelbergensis disappeared as they just cross bread themselves out of existence.  Apparently they thought our species was hotter than their own.

Assuming they are a separate species, which I frankly doubt.

Here were definitely morphology differences between Heidelbergensis and us, but as we addressed the other day in a different context, everybody has a great, great, great . . . grandmother/grandfather who was one of them.

And another thing.

They ate a lot of meat.

A lot.

I note that as it was in vogue for a while for those adopting an unnatural diet, i.e. vegetarianism, to claim that this is what we were evolved to eat. 

Not hardly.  With huge brains, and cold weather burning up calories, we were, and remain, meat eaters.

Foonotes:

1.  Archaic Homo sapiens  Christopher J. Bae (Associate Professor, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Hawaii-Manoa) © 2013 Nature Education  Citation: Bae, C. J. (2013) . Nature Education Knowledge 4(8):4

2. By  James Kidder, The Rise of Archaic Homo sapiens

3.  11.3: Defining Characteristics of Archaic Homo Sapiens

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...

Lex Anteinternet: Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago...:   

Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel

 

Evidence for the cooking of fish 780,000 years ago at Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel

Yup.  And. . . 

The early Middle Pleistocene site of Gesher Benot Ya’aqov, Israel (marine isotope stages 18–20; ~0.78 million years ago), has preserved evidence of hearth-related hominin activities and large numbers of freshwater fish remains (>40,000). 

People like to eat fish, and save for the oddballs who like to eat sushi, for which there is no explanation, they like their fish cooked.

Most places, people like to eat carp too.  For some odd reason, there's a prejudice against carp in at least the Western United States, but elsewhere, not so much.

So, our human ancestors 780,000 years ago. . . put another carp on the barbi. . . 

 

The Joy of Closed Roads

 

Lex Anteinternet: Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries tha...

Lex Anteinternet: Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries tha...: 

Evolutionary Biology and Resources. Mysteries that aren't.

The famous journal, The New Yorker notes:

During the coronavirus pandemic, pediatric endocrinologists saw a new surge of referrals for girls with early puberty—the number of these referrals doubled or even tripled during the lockdown periods of 2020, recent studies show.

newyorker.com

Why More and More Girls Are Hitting Puberty Early

So their conclusion?

Well, I don't know, as I couldn't get past the paywall.  I think I know the answer, and I'll get to that in a moment.

Mostly I'm posting this, however, due to the stupid anti-scientific comments that followed the Twitter article.  

Witness:

Nov 7

Replying to @NewYorker

Wonder how many were vaccinated- i think that's an honest and fair question no one is willing to ask

Mark Yerger@yerger224

Replying to @HoltonMusicMan and @NewYorker

its fair to ask anything.  it is a fact that this all occurred during the Trump presidency! its fair to ask what his administrations involvement was in all this.  yet he continues to evade this issue. I havent seen any denials or documents showing me otherwise.

Well played Yerger.

The same dipshittery appears in this comment:

BiancaD 🇺🇦🌻🤪❣🐷@rigbydan

Nov 8

Replying to @NewYorker

How many were vaccinated, since it was now confirmed that those of us who said the vaccine affected our cycles were proven correct?

Janice's Magic Wand@leighleighmw

Nov 8 

Replying to @rigbydan and @NewYorker

There was no vaccine available to children under 12 in 2020.

Again, good, if obvious, comment there to the apparent memory impaired and scientifically bereft BiancaD.

And:

Nov 8

Replying to @NewYorker

One reason is the hormones in the milk. I always bought organic milk and my daughter did not have early puberty like some of her friends.

Lone Stranger@LoneStr06411351

Nov 9

Replying to @Persona49820853 and @NewYorker

You got taken for a ride, then. Pediatric associations have firmly established the actual reason in the vast majority of situations is abundant nutrition. Puberty is delayed in environments of food scarcity. Which predominated much of human history until the last 100 years.

And that is exactly it.

In reality, the onset of puberty ages for girls isn't getting depressed due to hormones in your GMO cheese or mystery chemicals in your Blue Bunny, it's because human beings, or at least girls (one poster raises the good point that these stories seem to omit boys) are genetically programmed for lower onset of puberty ages in times of:1) high nutrition and 2) low physical output.

What were people doing during the pandemic?

I submit to you, they were sitting at home, eating.

In a state of nature, if girls are sitting around eating, their genes think "wow, we're in a super abundant period right now. . . move her up on the reproduction scale".

Now, I'm not claiming that's a good thing, but I am claiming that it's obviously the opposite of this?

Nov 8

Replying to @NewYorker

Does that indicate our future ability to reproduce is questionable?

Lone Stranger @LoneStr06411351

Lone Stranger, did you skip biology class?  Girls going to puberty earlier has the polar opposite effect.

Sheesh.

And that's why it's not a good thing.

What this is really evidence of is; 1) too much food, much of which is high calorie bad food, and 2) too little exercise.

Feed girls real food and get them involved in physical activity, the onset age will go up.

Better yet, get them out hunting and fishing, and learning how to produce their own food, and the onset age will go up, their health will improve, and the few who will be taken advantage of will decline in number.

Or, as noted:

Depends. In mammals at least the drift is to delay reproductive capability in times of stress or famine, so as to limit the population numbers straining already critical shortages.

When nutrition is abundant & ubiquitous is when sexual maturity manifests earlier.

Rage quitting this timeline@kesskessler401

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness part II

Dick Proenneke in Alone in the Wilderness

Lex Anteinternet: This is why we can't have nice things.

Lex Anteinternet: This is why we can't have nice things.: 

This is why we can't have nice things.

And this is absolutely appalling.

The State of Wyoming and Natrona County will actually make more money by way of this purchase than it does keeping the property in private hands.  So what is this really about?

Well, that requires reading the wind, but if you do, it's plain that the Republican Party of the state abhors the concept of public land to at least some degree. All of Wyoming's current Congressional delegation supported the concept of turning the Federal lands over to the state during the 2016 race, and likely still think that way, even though average Wyomingites are overwhelmingly opposed to it.  Governor Gordon's knee-jerk reaction to the Marton transfer seems to express that view as well.

Underlying it all is the concept, generally, that only immediate generations seem to count, and everything is better privatized.  Listen to Republican politicians in the state generally, and you'll commonly hear that view.  While few will openly state it, the general concept is that it's best to transfer all the land to the State, and for the state to sell all of it to private parties. That will generate "wealth".

It'll also convert the state basically into Ohio, but as it seems that monied interests are the only ones that count, much of the current GOP is deaf on this issue.

Now, we can't say that this is 100% true. The GOP itself is split between the Trumpite populist wings and the old party.  Many in the old party are not of this mind, and others remember the era when Governor Geringer and legislators who supported him, like Jim Hageman, Harriet Hageman's father, attempted to privatize the state's wildlife.  But many more do not recall anything of this sort.

Indeed, the state has become amazingly blind, at least politically, to think long term, a disturbing symptom of a society that's in deep existential distress.  Like late stage Weimar Germany, people are reaching out for simple solutions to long term systemic problems, and only the most extreme views seem to be really having an influence.  

Wyoming at one time had an actual two party system.  Today is an anniversary of various events which demonstrate that, as noted here regarding past Democrats elected to state office.

1896  Democratic Governor John E. Osborne elected to Congress from Wyoming.  He would serve a single term.

1933 John B. Kendrick, U.S. Senator from Wyoming, and sponsor of the Kendrick Irrigation Project in Natrona County, died.  Prior to being elected Senator, he had served as Governor.

1936  Henry H. Schwartz, Democrat from Casper, elected to the U.S. Senate.  Schwartz served one term and was defeated in his reelection bid.  The Ohio born lawyer practiced law in Casper.

Henry H. Schwartz

1942.  Lester Hunt, DDS, the sitting Wyoming Secretary of State and a Democrat, narrowly defeated Governor Nels H. Smith.

Lester C. Hunt.

Hunt would serve as Governor for two terms before going on to becoming Wyoming's Senator.  He killed himself in 1954 after Washington, D. C. policy picked up his son in 1953 for soliciting a male prostitute.  The scandal was kept quiet for a while, but political opponents threatened to use it against him as a threat to keep him from engaging in a 1954 bid for office.

I

1958  Gale McGee was elected to the U.S. Senate.  He was the first, and so far the only, University of Wyoming instructor to be elected to the U.S. Senate.   He was a Democrat.

McGee fit into another era in Wyoming's politics in that he was able to be elected as a Democrat and, perhaps even more surprisingly, the Class 2 Senator position was occupied by a Democrat at the time that McGee was elected, making both of Wyoming's Senators Democrats.  He served from 1959 until 1977.  That he was elected in the late 1950s is surprising to recall, because his somewhat flashy sartorial style really fit in with the early 1970s.  Nonetheless, his service stretched all the way back to 1959 and he was sworn in as  Senator by Vice President Richard Nixon.  After being defeated for a reelection bid in 1976, a campaign which he was largely absent in, he was appointed by President Carter as the Ambassador to the Organization of American States.

Politically, McGee was slightly liberal, but remained a popular Wyoming politician.  His defeat in 1976 was attributed by the national media to his opposition to the Vietnam War which was almost certainly incorrect.  McGee did oppose the war, but his seat remained safe throughout it.  There has been some speculation that by 1976 he no longer wanted to remain in the Senate, but for one reason or another ran anyhow.  That would be more consistent with his campaign that year against Malcolm Wallop in which Wallop was allowed to run a nearly unopposed campaign.  McGee was the last Senator from Wyoming to be a member of the Democratic Party.

The Post Office in Laramie is named after Senator McGee.

1964  Teno Roncolio, a Democratic lawyer originally from Rock Springs, but living in Cheyenne at the time, elected to Congress.

Roncolio would only serve one term from his 1964 election, and then attempt a run for the Senate.  His Senatorial run was unsuccessful, and he would regain his position in the House in 1970.

Roncolio's 1964 election meant that two out of the three members of Congress (House and Senate) from Wyoming were Democrats, an event which would be almost inconceivable today.

Roncolio received the Silver Star while serving in the U.S. Army during World War Two for heroism in the invasion of Normandy, and he was one of the sources interviewed by Cornelius Ryan for his Book "The Longest Day."  Roncolio was the last member of the Democratic Party to be elected to Congress from Wyoming.

And this is just from this day in history.  It omits such figures as Governors Ed Herschlar and Mike Sullivan.

It's frankly almost impossible to imagine Wyomingites voting for any of these figures now.  Osborne was elected because of something, while over a century ago, that directly relates to what we see now with Gordon, an effort by large landed interest to drive out small ones.  They were engaged, quite frankly, in an attempted Republican Party supported public lands, land grab.  The effort has never really stopped.

Roncolio was a war hero and McGee a University of Wyoming professor.  McGee would be reviled for merely occupying that profession today.  Roncolio would be harder to lambaste, as you really couldn't do that with somebody who had landed in Normandy on June 6, 1944.  That's instructive, however, in that much of the death of the Democratic Party in the state is due to the Democratic Party itself.

Roncalio was a lawyer who was a Catholic Italian American.  Sullivan was a Catholic Irish American.  Herschlar had been a World War Two Marine Corps raider.  Kendrick was a Texas born rancher.  Al these men essentially had "the bark on" in some fashion, and you knew that they held views that were close to those of common Wyomingites, including rank and file Republicans.  That day has really passed.  While some very solid Democrats remain, its nearly impossible to find one that holds middle of the road views on major social issues.  Statewide races are sometimes the exception, but often the state's Democrats can be predicted to be impossibly left wing to elect.

Up until now, this has been stemmed a bit by the fact that the majority of the Republican Party has been grounded in the traditional middle, but during this election that has already massively slipped.  It could be seen to be slipping when Barack Obama was elected, an event to which many Wyomingites had a strange knee-jerk reaction to that's hard to explain.  Following that, it became increasingly clear that major existential changes are occurring to industries that the state has long depended upon. While massive amounts of coal are still being mined, it's clear to anyone with eyes to see that this is a temporary situation, and one which the state hasn't begun to adjust to.  The same is now true of oil and gas.  Instead of addressing the economic crisis head on, the popular reaction has to been to blame the Democratic Party.  And the Democratic Party, in turn, by nationally embracing increasingly left wing causes, has made itself easy to blame.

This election really demonstrates this.  Absent a real surprise, Wyoming will be sending Harriet Hageman to Congress.  Neither Cheney nor Hageman can be regarded as "greens" (and while it's hardly been noted, Sen. Barasso has been quietly backing electric charging stations for oncoming electric automobiles in the state), but hardly a day has gone by this week where some Hageman campaign flyer hasn't arrived here, some of which just have silly theses.  To read Hageman's propaganda, the Federal government is at war with the state and keeping it from doing whatever it wants due to over regulation and by refusing to allow the production of oil and coal.  In reality, Federal oil and gas leases are going unused.

There's always an extreme danger in listening to people who tell you that nothing is your fault, and that everything is somebody else's, that person being somebody that you probably don't actually know.  One day in the early 30s somebody is telling you that the Deutsches Heer didn't really lose the war, and was somehow "stabbed in the back" by the Jews, and the next day you are freezing in a muddy trench in Stalingrad.  Well, that's your fault for listening to such complete nonsense.

Around here, right now, there seems to be very little push back on the concept that the voice of the public can be ignored, everything ought to be privatized, and everyone will benefit from never being able to go on the land again as we'll all have jobs for Big Out Of  State Entity.  That's nonsense.  But until there's a way to cause politicians to suffer at the polls for such positions, this will keep on keeping on.