It was a beautiful morning the day after the election. The fog stayed until 10, then the sun shone strong, and as I walked to the office the top of the towers glinted with light. At noon a fellow came outside and performed some symbolism:

At 1 PM the sirens went off, as always for the first Wednesday. I wonder how many people jumped more than usual, because they thought some new dark era had descended. Honestly, reading reddit - I know, I know - you’d think Hindenburg just handed over the keys to the office desk drawer where the “push button to start a fascism” is located.

I debated putting an article in front of fascism, but that’s the preferred way among those whose brains have been fully internetted. Oh nos you did a racism and so on. The insufferable snark that tells your coreligionists you’re one of the good ones.

En route to work I listened to The Rest is Politics, the British podcast, but only because Dominick Sandbroke from The Rest is History was on. He was the only sensible person on the podcast, inasmuch as he was a realist with a perspective outside the UK politics bubble and a good grasp of American political history. Now I’m listening to the day-after show, which regards the Mooch as a font of insight, and the turnaround is hilarious. Experts on the reasons for Harris victory yesterday, experts on the reasons for Trump’s victory today.

I will say this: the skyway and the lobby were buzzing today with people going about their business, their day, as ever. Outside, the seasonal shift:

And later:

Anyway, I did what I would have done no matter what: I was prepared to love my country, do my job, pay my taxes, mow my lawn, and return the cart to the corral at the grocery store.

Our weekly recap of a Wikipedia peregrination. Expect no conclusion or revelations, but if you've been with us since this started last year, you know . . . sometimes we learn interesting things.

		How do we get from here . . .
		. . . to there?

The peregrination began with this headline, confusing to modern eyes:

		Makes sense once you read the story.

Of course: Maximalists would be the Bolsheviks.

The two factions of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party were originally known as hard (Lenin supporters) and soft (Martov supporters).

In the 2nd Congress vote, Lenin's faction won votes on the majority of important issues, and soon came to be known as Bolsheviks, from the Russian bolshinstvo, ‘majority'.

From 1907 onward, English-language articles sometimes used the term Maximalist for "Bolshevik" and Minimalist for "Menshevik," which proved to be confusing as there was also a "Maximalist" faction within the Russian Socialist Revolutionary Party in 1904–1906 (which, after 1906, formed a separate Union of Socialists-Revolutionaries Maximalists) and then again after 1917.

Splitter! About those other Maximalists:

The SR Maximalists also had a much more favourable view of terror and expropriation. Before the Azef scandal of 1908, the PSR had endorsed 'political terror', i.e., attacks on state officials and members of the ruling royal family. Many future Maximalists had been involved in such attacks, as well as in 'expropriations' (bank robberies and the like).

Criminals, in other words. But once you blow up the old order, morals are realigned and redefined.

		The "Azef scandal" concerned a double agent by that name, who was later exposed and fled to Germany, where he “lived with a singer and worked as a corset salesman and stock speculator to invest the money he had amassed during his career as a double agent.” This was Azef.

He was exposed by Vladimir Burtsev, a revolutionary who would oppose the Tsar, then the Bolsheviks. Good luck with that, comrade. Arrested over and over.

In 1930s, Burtsev fought against fascism and antisemitism. In 1934–1935 he was a witness in the Berne Trial, exposing the Okhrana's role in creating the infamous fraud The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. In 1938 in Paris he published a book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proven Forgery.

Burtsev died in poverty in Paris in 1942 from a blood infection.

The Protocols, a BS tract from start to finish, was plagiarized in part from this guy:

		Maurice Joly (22 September 1829 – 15 July 1878) was a French political writer and lawyer known for The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a political satire of Napoleon III. Shades of the historical figures Niccolò Machiavelli and Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu meet in Hell in the year 1864 and dispute on politics. In this way, Joly tried to conceal a direct, and then illegal, criticism of Louis-Napoleon's rule.

As Joly’s bio notes:

Neither the Dialogue itself, nor the text copied from it were antisemitic. They merely formed the scaffolding upon which the calumny against the Jewish people was built.

Joly would get a low-ranking position in the Commune in 1871, but spent a lot of time suing newspapers for “either for not accepting his stories or for not publishing news about him.” Fame having eluded him, he popped himself in the noggin in 1878.

But! Umberto Eco says Joly stole some passages from . . .

Marie-Joseph "Eugène" Sue (26 January 1804 – 3 August 1857) was a French novelist. He was one of several authors who popularized the genre of the serial novel in France with his very popular and widely imitated The Mysteries of Paris, which was published in a newspaper from 1842 to 1843.

And here we end with this note: Eugene Debs was named after Sue. As Debs would write in 1919:

Lenin and Trotsky were the men of the hour and under their fearless, incorruptible and uncompromising leadership the Russian proletariat has held the fort against the combined assaults of all the ruling class powers of earth. It is a magnificent spectacle. It stirs the blood and warms the heart of every revolutionist, and it challenges the admiration of all the world.

So far as the Russian proletariat is concerned, the day of the people has arrived, and they are fighting and dying as only heroes and martyrs can fight and die to usher in the day of the people not only in Russia but in all the nations on the globe.

How’d that all turn out, Gene?

We’re in Wisconsin. One thousand souls, so we don’t expect much. Don't get me wrong - I love WI! But upper midwest small towns under a grand, you're not going to find world-class architecture and a thriving downtown. Or might you find just that?

By golly Mr. Dillon

A bank denuded, or was it always this plain?

“That man who came through town a year back, I tell you, could he sell paint.”

“Only had one color but me made it seem like the best color in the world.”

There’s a sturdy, attractive, confident quality in a dark red brick building that’s been upgraded with black.

What did someone just teleport in from England

If I had to bet money, I’d say the ground floor was originally shops, and the windows came later.

At least they had the decency to match them with the upper floor, although the general effect is odd.

“Then another fellow came along, heard we liked painting our buildings, and turns out he had a color of his own. Musta sold a thousand gallons.”

“Old Horace wouldn’t talk to him, though. Slammed the door in his face. Hung up when he called.”

“Then the first guy who sold us the beige came back, and now he was in the siding line.”

“But he ended up dead in his hotel room, no one quite knows how. Anyway, a few weeks later, the feller shows up with a sample case full of modern bricks.”

“Turned out, though, the siding guy had a brother. Came ‘round looking for the man who killed his brother, so he said, and also had some pretty new ideas as well.”

The fellow with the rocks was still doing the territory, but when he came back, he got to know the siding guy’s brother, and I guess they started doing drugs together.”

“The Siding Guy decided to sell his brother’s paint to honor his memory. He also started wearing buckskins and leather vests and a gunbelt; the boy had problems.”

“He also volunteered as a fireman, but they really didn’t send him out on any jobs.”

Okay, I can’t keep this up. Don’t know how the story would fit this. Maybe "consanguinity led to a horrible defect."

Hmm. Three eras? Mid-century probably / possibly pre-war for ground floor, post-war for middle.

Your Google Street View Moment

Okay then

Yikes.

The opposite of the Frog Building: a barren bleached street with 40s / early 50s details.

Which I love.

The poor scoured building on the right had a garage door, with the big protuberances intended to take the damage from a car that missed the bay.

Looks odd for a garage.

Whoever they were, they lost.

Okay, here's who they were.

Those fabric-and-frame awnings will not, I think, be well-remembered.

That'll do! Motels await.