A long discredited, arcane 150-year-old law is back in the news... Last week at the Supreme Court, the Comstock Act of 1873 was referenced... during oral arguments in a case dealing with access to... drugs... used in medication abortions. Anti-abortion activists like to bring up the Comstock Act because one of its clauses prohibits sending through the mail 'every article, instrument, substance, drug, medicine or thing' that could possibly lead to an abortion.... That could effectively make abortion impossible to access even in places like Minnesota, which has affirmatively protected a woman’s right to choose.... Back in the 1860s, a former Civil War soldier from rural Connecticut named Anthony Comstock... lobb[ied] for federal legislation that would empower the post office to search for and seize anything in the mail that met Comstock’s criteria for being 'obscene,' 'lewd' or just plain 'filthy'.... In its broad wording, the law not only made it illegal to send pornography through the mail, it also outlawed the sending of medical textbooks for their depictions of the human body, personal love letters that hinted at physical as well as romantic relationships, and even news stories. The whole thing was very silly and impracticable, and that’s why the Comstock Act was relegated to the dustbin of history...."
It's interesting, this "dustbin of history." How does it work? Apparently not well enough to keep things from needing to be repealed by actual statutory law.
William Safire wrote in the NYT about the phrase back in 1983— 40 years ago, but still fresh to me. And he himself was looking back 66 years:
The phrase was popularized by Leon Trotsky, who told the Mensheviks departing from the 1917 Congress of Soviets, ''Go to the place where you belong from now on - the dustbin of history!'' That was the way his phrase, transliterated as musornyi yashchik, was translated in the English edition of Trotsky's autobiography; in reviews of the movie ''Reds,'' Trotsky was quoted as saying of the faction opposing the Bolsheviks, ''They are just so much refuse which will be swept into the garbage heap of history.''
A third translation is trash heap.... ''The transliteration for trash heap . . . is closer to trash can,'' says Prof. Carl Linden of the George Washington University's Institute of Sino-Soviet Studies. ''In old Russia - and probably still - there would be a courtyard . . . with a big box for all the tenement trash.'' That was probably the trash can, ashcan, ash heap, dustbin, dust heap or garbage heap Trotsky meant....
Interesting to see Trotsky here. Safire's talking about which is the best translation. I like "dustbin," but what I want is more discussion of the fantasy belief within the metaphor, the idea that things can be sent — or, more fancily, "relegated" — to a place in the past where they will stay put.
When I think of Trotsky, I think of the man with an axe stuck in his head....
Ever seen that play — "Variations on the Death of Trotsky"? I have.
The play is divided into eight scenes... each depicting a differing final moment of Trotsky's life and making satirical allusions to soap opera conventions... [T]he play calls for Trotsky to die at the end of each scene, and then continues on (after the ring of a bell) from near where the last scene left off... Trotsky is depicted throughout the show with a mountain-climber's ax sticking comically out of his skull... Though this is apparent to the audience from the very beginning, Trotsky himself does not realize that the ax is there....
Here's a nice version of it, done under the constraints of the covid lockdown:
The lockdown mode of living... who remembers it? Covid... it's consigned to the dustbin of history, is it not?
[T]he plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good... it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests... it bides its time in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and... perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it would rouse up its rats again and send them forth to die in a happy city.
Wrote Albert Camus, in "The Plague."
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71 comments:
If your friend Dustbin O. History thinks women don't deserve sex-based rights, healthy kids should be medicalised and free speech needs stamping out, I'm not interested in being his buddy. He sounds a massive dick.
Communism itself should have been consigned to the dustbin of history, but it keeps reappearing on college campuses and the editorial pages of the 'New York Time.'
Help me with "impracticable." How is it different from "impractical"? I know it is not germane to historical dustbins, nor to the Comstock Act, but I've wondered about it for a long time.
Is all of history, the dustbin? The Trotsky stuff almost seems that, in his view, history itself is the dustbin.
"'Go to the place where you belong from now on - the dustbin of history!'" Like he's saying, your time has past, you have no future here. Now is our time.
I've always taken the phrase to mean that there is a part of history for the bad things, and that was the dustbin. Sort of like the wrong side of history.
Many people thought Marxism itself had been thrown in the dustbin of history with the fall of the USSR and other Communist nations in the early 1990s. Nope, it morphed into a watermelon (green on the outside, red on the inside) and then the rainbow of Woke. With the current trend of defunding the police, trans-everything, and justifying Gaza, there's a good chance "Marxism" will become a standard old school religion in a generation.
Old ideas never die, they just sit around as stale abstract fantasies in universities for 40 years the creating professor dies. The same bad ideas then return with new language as new professors get tenure.
Also, Trotsky Icepick was a mostly forgotten 1980s and 1990s band too. Fun name, but don't bother looking them up.
Congressmen have been passing laws with consequences they don't understand for at least 100+ years.
Plus ça change, and all that.
Her proposed legislation should be expanded.
Create a statute of limitations for the all laws. Charges never garnering a conviction, will be null and void. New legislation must be passed for the law will be enforced in the future.
Other than somewhat pretentious use of this phrase I don't think I have ever seen the word "dustbin" used in American speech. That includes in books from as far back as the 1800s.
I do see it commonly used in English language from 1800s to today.
I associate the "dustbin of history" phrase with Karl Marx but I just did a quick word search of both Capital and The Communist Manifesto and "dustbin" nor "Dust bin" does not appear in either. Am I remembering wrongly? It can happen.
Brits use bin commonly as in "Throw it in the bin" meaning trash can. Or just "bin it" to throw something away. In the US, we use bin commonly but as a container for storing something, not for trash.
John Henry
"Help me with "impracticable." How is it different from "impractical"?"
I think "impractical" is more about how something works in practice and "impracticable" is more about how hard it is to put something into practice.
In the case of the Comstock Act, Smith is talking about the difficulty of drawing the line between what's legal and what's not. It was hard to apply the law. So she wrote "impracticable."
If she'd meant that it's a better accommodation of human nature not to get after people who send sexy books and letters through the mail, then I'd use "impractical."
A few days ago, I wrote a "write whatever you want" comment on this Althouse blog, praising a PBS broadcast of a Paul Anka concert. This PBS concert was broadcast just a few years ago. After I deleted that concert from my video recordings, I could not remember whether that recent concert included Anka's song "Having My Baby", which had been a #1 hit song in 1974.
....
You didn't have to keep it.
I wouldn't put you through it.
You could have swept it from your life,
But you wouldn't do it.
...
I think that song now might be in the dustbin of history.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFHWl-ZyRAg
thanks, that makes sense.
If it is sent Fedex or UPS Comstock would not apply, would it?
That's a serious question. I don't trust the feds not to have stretched the meaning of "post office" or "Mail"
Anyone know?
I think I have read of scammers sending fraudulent documents by Fedex/UPS to avoid incurring the wrath of General Henry Atkins https://youtu.be/k8M9LF7Gz4E?si=Cgzy-DgLSioppN2P
There's always a Seinfeld episode, isn't there? No matter which of life's questions is needling you, Jerry has the answers.
John Henry
"Is all of history, the dustbin? The Trotsky stuff almost seems that, in his view, history itself is the dustbin. "'Go to the place where you belong from now on - the dustbin of history!'" Like he's saying, your time has past, you have no future here. Now is our time. I've always taken the phrase to mean that there is a part of history for the bad things, and that was the dustbin. Sort of like the wrong side of history."
It's the trashcan. It's not just over but it's stuff that deserved to be thrown out and you sure don't want to fish it back out and use it again.
Some stuff from history, if you saw it where it could be picked up and used again, you'd certainly want to do that.
What I'm drawing attention to is that statutes that haven't been repealed are still usable or may be still usable. There's no guarantee that they are irretrievable. Someone asserting that X is in the "dustbin of history" is attempting to say that you can't take it out again.
But you can take things out of a dustbin. It's an interesting metaphor.
And yet, per Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ash_heap_of_history:
"In 1887 the English essayist Augustine Birrell (1850–1933) coined the term in his series of essays, 'Obiter Dicta': that great dust heap called 'history.'"
That sounds like he means all of history.
And Safire was writing about it because Reagan had used it (in the "ash heap" form"):
"In a speech to the British House of Commons, on 8 June 1982, U.S. President Ronald Reagan later responded that "freedom and democracy will leave Marxism and Leninism on the ash heap of history.""
The Republican position on abortion is a collective suicide note snatching defeat from the very jaws of victory. Let us remember who alone can take the credit for overturning Roe: Donald J. Trump.
As I understand the abortion pill, it is actually 2 medications, one to kill the fetus, the other, taken a couple days later to expel it. Timing of the second dose is critical to prevent the now dead fetus rotting in the woman's body.
It seems to me that this is the kind of thing that really demands a doctor's, or at least some kind of medical, attention.
Recently the FDA disagreed with me.
Was the Comstock Act a problem before? Did doctors get the medications mailed to them through the Post Office? Is it a problem now because suppliers want to mail the medications?
Why now? What changed?
Is it a problem now because the drugs are being advertised in magazines sent by mail? In the 60s and before the PO used to go after "obscene" books and mags being mailed.
I guess I just don't understand the issue of the Comstock Act on this.
I do understand the problem obsolete laws, though. Including this one. It is legal to show graphic video of midgets having sex with goats on the the internet but illegal to send a USB stick with a downloaded copy via the mail. Sending by UPS and Fedex are OK, I think.
The US and the individual states have way too many obsolete laws on the books. Congress should pass a law repealing ALL current laws of the US as of, say, 2029. Then they could get to work revoting all the ones that we need. Perhaps 20% of them.
But that's another thread.
John Henry
Language Log wrote about the phrase in 2011, in https://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=3654
That's a long blog post, concentrating on the same issue that entranced Safire, the differing forms. A Google books search yielded all these uses:
trash heap of history 530
dust heap of history 493
ash heap of history 482
trash can of history 458
dust bin of history 438
scrap heap of history 432
rubbish heap of history 414
dust pile of history 231
dung heap of history 124
There are some observations:
"And by the early 1900s, it seems that versions of this phrase were stereotypically associated with the attitude of revolutionaries towards their enemies.... I suspect that the phrase may have gained currency in the works of the socialist movements of the late 19th century.... But there's no question that after 1917, there was a strong association with left-wing attitudes towards the fate of anciens régimes.... While retaining the association with revolutionary outcomes, the phrase began to switch from left to right with a bold choice by Ronald Reagan (or one of his speechwriter)s in his 1982 address to the British Parliament.... My impression is that in recent years, the metaphor has become equally distributed across the political spectrum, as "conservatives" have become increasingly interested in promoting radical change."
Ash heap is a more American phrase than dust bin. I'm old enough to remember when many homes were heated with coal furnaces. Ashes had to be removed and placed in a heap or bin in the back yard.
Ditto ashes from fireplaces.
Wood ash was a valuable asset because it could be used to make soap.
John Henry
Now I'm trying to think of other variations:
garbage disposal of history
compost heap of history
deleted files of history
BleachBit of history
“Ever seen that play — "Variations on the Death of Trotsky"? I have.”
Yes, it’s one of the plays in “All in the Timing”, a great collection of one-act plays by David Ives.
When the Roman Republic fell, democracy was consigned to the dustbin of history. Our founders fished it out along with the eagle which was the symbol of both the Republic and the Empire and used that eagle as a symbol for our Republic. In our Republic, we believe that Government is founded on the consent of the governed and exists to secure certain inalienable rights. That would be the trad way to think.
But there have been people who have claimed that history has a discernable, inevitable direction and that the best among us instinctively see and follow that path, the correct path among all the crossing paths. And the left has always claimed that its direction is that correct path. They say that the rest of us, missing that correct path, will wander about till we fall into the dustbin at the end of our pointless, deplorable lives. (The name Hegel is associated with all this philosophically and the Marx took it up but we know these positions from our living in the USA as it now is. I can't decide whether knowing the philosophical history helps or not.)
In my opinion the only trend to follow is that which goes toward giving human dignity to groups such as women, the workers, the blacks or the unborn. But groups which claim that they are fighting for their human dignity by annihilating, insulting or degrading some other group as the Palestinian supporters are now doing to the Jews - well, that's just contradictory and it's wrong. Just wrong, no matter who wins within the limits of in my limited time span. Basically, I'm a trad person and I've been in the dustbin of history since I started supporting prolife. It's getting crowded in here what with half the voters in the country joining me and all Christians and now the Jews. The fact that the trans people got out hasn't made a lot of room.
Where there's a dustbin, there's a dustman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y7GeZ3YmONw
They're trying to scare the girls by bringing up the Comstock Act and spiders and snakes because their problem is that the FDA clearly exceeded its mandate and will likely lose this case on that basis alone and they don't want to talk about that.
There will be much screaming.
Well the Comstock Act reference certainly got the Trump haters on the Los Angeles Times stirred up. The Slimes had a front page column about how the Evil Orange Man could block access to abortion in California if elected.
imagine, The HORROR! if abortion pills had to be sent through UPS or fedEx!
Now, THAT would be an inconvenience!
Not quite as inconvenient as being aborted.. But WHO THE HELL CARES about children?
You would think people who say they care about the environment, would welcome repurposing things that have been thrown away.
Not to belabour the point but aren’t DE&I surrogates bringing back Jim Crow?
Just saying.
Please, please do not consign paint thinner, oil-soaked rags or other flammable materials to the dustbin of History, or there might result a dangerous dumpster fire of History.
Referencing Comstock also brings forth the useful but underused word "Comstockery," defined as "strict censorship of materials considered obscene" per Merriam-Webster. What's being censored (or canceled) now has changed substantially, but one could envision Taylor Lorenz standing beside Anthony Comstock had she been born 130 years earlier.
It would be cool and ironic if Trotsky were consigned to the dustbin of history, but I don't think that's going to happen. His body count is way too impressive. If you want to be remembered, kill a lot of people......Besides being a mass murderer, he had a way with words. "Gold for Bread" was his slogan. This enabled the commissars to seize the religious articles of the Orthodox faith. As a bonus, it also enabled the commissars to murder the clergy and believers who tried to protect or hide their sacred relics.....I read his autobiography. If I were his editor, I would have recommended that he tell something of his affair with Frida. The book would probably have sold better. That man had some understanding wives; He left his first wife with their two young children in exile in Siberia whilst he went on to live in the various capitals of Europe. In his autobiography, he says that she encouraged him to do this. Why would he lie about something like that?.....His second wife (sort of, he never divorced his first) would arrange to be discreetly absent from home during his trysts with Frida. We all should have wives like Trotsky and Bill Clinton.
Ash_heap_of_history
=================
warming weather is ripe for improperly disposed ashes to start trash bin fire?
so current events/history = trash bin on fire
“Those who ignore history are doomed to repeat it.”
We’re in a doom loop.
Footnote to above: The "Gold for Bread" slogan wasn't strictly speaking absolutely accurate. The gold from the melted down sacred objects was not used to buy bread for the starving peasants, but rather to buy weapons for the Red Army. It would have been better translated as "Gold so we can kill you peasant motherfuckers". But you can see how such a slogan wouldn't have the same catchy cachet.....The Bolsheviks came to power on the slogan "Bread, Peace, Land". The people got famine, civil war, and collective farms instead, but it was a cool slogan..... Trash heap or dust bin of history isn't the right phrase for all those emaciated and mangled bodies that were left in the wake of the Red Revolution...Interesting to note that the melting down of a thousand years of religious history didn't meet with anywhere near the same opprobrium that happened to the Taliban when they blew up those statues.
I made it through high school and college believing that Trotsky was killed with an ice pick (familiar to me because households in the 50s had ice picks in the utensil drawer). Even when I learned that it was a climber's ice axe, I was puzzled that such a weapon was at hand in Mexico City. And, while I recall reading "dustbin" I would swear the term most frequently was translated as "ash heap" in the 60s and 70s.
Btw. When is all this history shaming going to stop?
You got your wrong side of history. Dustbin side of history. Histrionics (a mansplain cousin).
History needs a break. IMHO.
The Recycle Bin implies that perhaps there is something worth saving after all.
Lawyers like to dustbin of history dive looking for long discredited arcane laws to use on their political opponents. No one is above the law!
Would be ironic if the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision is what saves the country from another Trump term.
Clever baiting by Democrats of Republican anti-abortion zealots, to get them to go all nutter on this Comstock Act repeal stunt and have it play in the press for a few weeks. Dems love Repubs committing anti-abortion suicide - especially in an election year.
Abortion - the Republican slayer.
John henry said...
"If it is sent Fedex or UPS Comstock would not apply, would it?"
To the extent it applies to anything it's written to apply to "common carriers" outside the post office.
i'm with Two Eyed Jack.. Watch OUT! for the Dumpster Fire of History!!
My nickname in high school was "Trotsky". Not because of politics, but because two guys who had just seen a photo of him in Florida's 12th grade-required class Capitalism versus Communism though I was his spitting image. The nickname has stuck with me (with certain friends) 50-plus years now. The girls affectionately called me "Trot". Some thought it was my real last name.
P.S. Only ignorant liberals would think that by returning the decision on abortion laws to the states would enable a re-elected Donald Trump to ban it in California. Bwhaha
They built Shea Stadium on the Valley of Ashes.
Nowadays it's all so confusing that antiquated ideas and practices relegated to the trash can end up in the recycle bin of history. Days of Future Past.
Now it’s The Comstuck Act
“Lawyers like to dustbin of history dive looking for long discredited arcane laws to use on their political opponents”
John Eastman may have an opinion / experience he would like to share about that.
Repealing the Comstock Act will do nothing for or against the baby murderers and their accomplices. But it will make sharing kiddie porn through the mail somewhat safer for perverts like Joseph "Lemmesniffit" Biden and his supporters.
Don't repeal, amend. Remove the language banning DIY home abortion kits (with and without coathangers) and add language making it a capital offense for a serving POTUS to touch or fondle anyone under 21 years of age. Make Biden veto the bill or give up his "hobby".
What's interesting to me is that the drug in question (RU-486 / mifepristone) is a very strong anti-cortisol. People with Cushing's Disease have out-of-control adrenals which produce too much adrenaline and cortisol.
Cortisol is required for central obesity which most Americans suffer from as part of our general metabolic disorder. It's also been shown that once a person's cortisol levels increase from baseline, they do not fall back to the original baseline without intervention.
So, interestingly we may see RU-486's anti-cortisol properties come into focus as a potential anti-obesity measure. If chronically high cortisol leads to obesity, diabetes, CVD, and other modern-day disorders then reducing cortisol back to historical norms could be of great health benefit.
RU-486... may be used to take a life or it may be used to prolong a life. I'd like to order some through the mail, if I may.
Human rites performed for social, clinical, political, criminal, and climate progress. #WickedSolution #TransHumane
That said, six weeks until their baby is a legally viable human life in all 50 states. #NoJudgment #NoLabels
The dustbin is where "burdens" are collected and carbon sequestered.
Dustbin Hoffman?
Uriah Heep - an English rock band formed in London in 1969... named in reference to the well-known character from David Copperfield.
Dust bin history since Bin Laden was buried at sea.
Inspired by reading comments here.
The Cock Block Act?
It needs to be shit-canned
Nebraska democrats pushed onto the dustbin of history
Nebraska GOP Gains ‘Filibuster Proof’ Majority in Legislature After Democrat Switches Parties
Democrats Freak Out About Nebraska as Trump Pushes Winner-Take-All System in State
Dave Bigley? if trans fanatics Can't Filibuster.. HOW well they STILL be able to mutilate children?
ya…the douchebags if the California Bar will be relegated to the dustbin of history…
..the people there targeted a typical nonpartisan association, then killed it, gutted it and are now wearing its skin demanding respect.
Mike Sylwester said...
"A few days ago, I wrote a "write whatever you want" comment on this Althouse blog, praising a PBS broadcast of a Paul Anka concert. This PBS concert was broadcast just a few years ago. After I deleted that concert from my video recordings, I could not remember whether that recent concert included Anka's song "Having My Baby", which had been a #1 hit song in 1974."
Heh. Brings to mind an episode of WKRP where a bored-out-of-his mind Johnny Fever was playing a quasi-religious choir singing "Having Our Baby." Obviously a dig at LDS, but also pretty much at fundamentalists of many stripes. I still laughed.
Rather than search for every arcane criminal law enacted over the last 200 years, wouldn't it make more sense to simply pass an act declaring that "a criminal law had been relegated to the ash heap of history" is a complete defense to any criminal charge.
The Prairie Hone Companion radio show had a skit imitating the NPR Jazzy shows where they had a low voiced guy say rhyming things about the inner city music scene while a band played rhythm in the background. It was called “The Dustbins of Jazz.”
impracticable
adjective
im·prac·ti·ca·ble (ˌ)im-ˈprak-ti-kə-bəl
: not practicable : incapable of being performed or accomplished by the means employed or at command.
I read this word just yesterday , “General Albert Sidney Johnston said that the defense of Fort Henry was impracticable.” It was not impossible, but could not be done with the resources he had at hand.
Chamberpot of history. Urinal of history. Toilet of history. Outhouse of history.
I made it farther than Robother reading various accounts of Trotsky's death by either an axe or an icepick. There seemed to be a lot of confusion about which.
I eventually learned that it was an ice axe which explained the confusion.
Ann, you say the picture shows Trotsky with an ice axe in his head. Did Mead get a look at it? I think he has some expertise in this area. What you show is not an ice axe or an axe of any kind.
It is a common gardening implement combining a spikey "pick" on one side and a wider, horizontal "mattock" on the other. Commonly called "pick-mattock" I'll bet you and Mead own one.
R.E. Lee was famous for ordering subordinates to do thus and such, if practicable.
As much as I respect and admire Reagan, and love his rhetoric, it’s sad to know that he was wrong.
Communism is just as alive now as it was back then, and even more so in this country. There are more true believers in the upcoming generations than there were in mine.
John henry said...
"I don't think I have ever seen the word "dustbin" used in American speech."
Dustpan is very common, I can't think of another word for it. They got separated somewhere along the way.
"Dust"as a synonym for trash is Brit usage, been around much longer than Dickens, though he cemented its usage in the language via the character in Our Mutual Friend, Noddy Boffin -- the Golden Dustman who had made a fortune out of garbage contracting/sorting/selling.
I see Meade opened the thread by "plagiarizing" (almost, if you're a defender of the multitude of "studies" profs in higher ed) J.K.Rowling's response to a psychotic trans supporter.
Covid... it's consigned to the dustbin of history, is it not?
What? And disrupt all the plans of our betters, who discovered how easy it was to seize control of our lives by simply stirring up mass fear using a few 'experts' and our one-note 'news' media? This travesty of governance will surely be attempted again, as a regular drill.
Insufficiently Sensitive said...
Covid... it's consigned to the dustbin of history, is it not?
Get with the game plan, this year it's Bird Flu!
Is there some value to requiring that laws have a "sell by" date -- a date when the law will automatically be repealed? The view from this "I am not a lawyer" person is that "the law" is full of detritus that should be moved to the compost heap.
"Dustbin of history" = anything inconvenient to expedient exercise of progressive narrative.
Change the law, change the definition. Don't whine about "dustbins". Abortion-enabling law is prevue of state legislatures, not Supreme Court - Constitutional Law 101. All those years of "Roe vs Wade", US legislators and Fed politicians knew it was cobbled-together placeholder SC ruling that needed individual state legislation to properly ratify into law. Democrats pragmatically chose not to initiate needed state laws, eventually SC was compelled to fix its jurisdictional error.
Biden could have fixed this, by directing his elected 50-state Democrats to enact needed legislation, but those Democrats either won't do it, or can't do it. So Biden wags his finger at SC members at State of Union speech, for his own failure to act.
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