Defiant

Defiant (pronounced dih-fahy-uhnt)

Characterized by defiance or a willingness to defy; boldly resistant or challenging.

1830s: From the French défiant, from the Old French, present participle of the verb défier (to challenge, defy, provoke), the construct thus def(y) + “i” + -ant.  Defy dates from the mid thirteenth century and was from the Middle English defien, from the Old French desfier, from the Vulgar Latin disfidare (renounce one's faith), the construct being dis- (away) + fidus (faithful).  The construct in French was thus des- (in the sense of negation) + fier (to trust), (from the Vulgar Latin fīdāre, from the Classical Latin fīdere (fidelity),  In the fourteenth century, the meaning shifted from “be disloyal” to “challenge”.  The suffix –ant was from the Middle English –ant & -aunt, partly from the Old French -ant, from Latin -āns; and partly (in adjectival derivations) a continuation of the use of the Middle English -ant, a variant of -and, -end, from the Old English -ende ( the present participle ending).  Extensively used in the sciences (especially medicine and pathology), the agent noun was derived from verb.  It was used to create adjectives (1) corresponding to a noun in -ance, having the sense of "exhibiting (the condition or process described by the noun)" and (2) derived from a verb, having the senses of: (2a) "doing (the verbal action)", and/or (2b) "prone/tending to do (the verbal action)".  In English, many of the words to which –ant was appended were not coined in English but borrowed from the Old French, Middle French or Modern French.  The negative adjectival forms are non-defiant & undefiant although there is a kind of middle ground described by quasi-defiant, semi-defiant & half-defiant, the latter three sometimes used in military conflicts where, for whatever reason, it’s been necessary (or at least desirable) for a force to offer a “token resistance” prior to an inevitable defeat.  The adjective over-defiant refers to a resistance or recalcitrance, the extent or duration of which is not justified by the circumstances; in such cases the comparative is “more defiant” and the superlative “most defiant”.  Defiant is a noun & adjective, defiantness is a noun and defiantly is an adverb; the noun plural is defiants.

Defiance in politics: use with caution

The commonly used synonyms include rebellious, direful, truculent, insolent, rebellious, recalcitrant, refractory, contumacious & insubordinate but in diplomacy, such words must be chosen with care because what is one context may be a compliment, in another it may be a slight.  This was in 1993 discovered by Paul Keating (b 1944; Prime Minister of Australia 1991-1996) who labelled Dr Mahathir bin Mohamad (b 1925; prime minister of Malaysia 1981-2003 & 2018-2020) one of the “recalcitrant” when the latter declined to attend a summit meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC).  For historic reasons, Dr Mahathir was sensitive to the memories of the imperialist oppressors telling colonized people what to do and interpreted Mr Keating’s phrase as a suggestion he should be more obedient (the most commonly used antonym of defiant, the others including obedient & submissive).  Things could quickly have been resolved (Dr Mahathir of the “forgive but not forget” school of IR (international relations)) but, unfortunately, Mr Keating was brought up in the gut-wrenching “never apologize” tradition of the right-wing of the New South Wales (NSW) Labor Party so what could have been handled as a clumsy linguistic gaffe was allowed to drag on.

Circa 1933 Chinese propaganda poster featuring a portrait of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (Chiang Chung-cheng).  Set in an oval frame below flags alongside stylized Chinese lettering, the generalissimo is depicted wearing his ceremonial full-dress uniform with decorations.

The admission an opponent is being “defiant” must also sometimes be left unsaid.  Ever since Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (1887-1975; leader of the Republic of China (mainland) 1928-1949 & the renegade province of Taiwan 1949-1975) in 1949 fled mainland China, settling on and assuming control of the island of Taiwan, the status of the place has been contested, most dramatically in the incidents which flare up occasionally in the in the straits between the island and the mainland, remembered as the First (1954–1955), Second (1958) and Third (1995-1996) Taiwan Strait Crises which, although sometimes in retrospect treated as sabre rattling or what Hun Sen (b 1952; prime minister (in one form or another) 1985-2023) might have called “the boys letting off steam”, were at the time serious incidents, each with the potential to escalate into something worse.  Strategically, the first two crises were interesting studies in Cold War politics, the two sides at one stage exchanging information about when and where their shelling would be aimed, permitting troops to be withdrawn from the relevant areas on the day.  Better to facilitate administrative arrangements, each side’s shelling took place on alternate days, satisfying honor on both sides.  The other landmark incident was China’s seat at the United Nations (UN), held by the Republic of China (ROC) (Taiwan) between 1945-1971 and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) (the mainland) since.

Jiefang Taiwan, xiaomie Jiangzei canyu (Liberate Taiwan, and wipe out the remnants of the bandit Chiang) by Yang Keyang (楊可楊) and Zhao Yannian (趙延年). 

A 1954 PRC propaganda poster printed as part of anti-Taiwan campaign during first Taiwan Strait Crisis (1954-1955), Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek depicted as a scarecrow erected on Taiwan by the US government and military. Note the color of the generalissimo’s cracked and disfigured head (tied to a pole) and the similarity to the color of the American also shown.  The artists have included some of the accoutrements often associated with Chiang’s uniforms: white gloves, boots and a ceremonial sword.  The relationship between Chiang and the leaders of PRC who defeated his army, Chairman Mao (Mao Zedong. 1893–1976; paramount leader of PRC 1949-1976) and Zhou Enlai (1898–1976; PRC premier 1949-1976) was interesting.  Even after decades of defiance in his renegade province, Mao and Zhou still referred to him, apparently genuinely, as “our friend”, an expression which surprised both Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) and Henry Kissinger (b 1923; US national security advisor 1969-1973 & secretary of state 1973-1977) who met the chairman and premier during their historic mission to Peking in 1972.

A toast: Comrade Chairman Mao Zedong (left) and  Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (right), celebrating the Japanese surrender, Chongqing, China, September 1945.  After this visit, they would never meet again.

Most people, apparently even within the PRC, casually refer to the place as “Taiwan” but state and non-governmental entities, anxious not to upset Beijing, use a variety of terms including “Chinese Taipei” (the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA, the International Federation of Association Football) & its continental confederations (AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBOL, OFC and UEFA)), “Taiwan District” (the World Bank) and “Taiwan Province of China” (the International Monetary Fund (IMF)).  Taiwan’s government uses an almost declarative “Republic of China” which is the name adopted for China after the fall of the Qing dynasty and used between 1912-1949 and even “Chinese Taipai” isn’t without controversy, “Taipei” being the Taiwanese spelling whereas Beijing prefers “Taibei,” the spelling used in the mainland’s Pinyin system.  There have been variations on those themes and there’s also the mysterious “Formosa”, use of which persisted in the English-speaking world well into the twentieth century, despite the Republic of Formosa existing on the island of Taiwan for only a few months in 1895.  The origin of the name Formosa lies in the island in 1542 being named Ilha Formosa (beautiful island) by Portuguese sailors who had noticed it didn’t appear on their charts.  From there, most admiralties in Europe and the English-speaking world updated their charts, use of Formosa not fading until the 1970s.

All that history is well-known, if sometimes subject to differing interpretations but some mystery surrounds the term “renegade province”, used in recent years with such frequency that a general perception seems to have formed that it’s Beijing’s official (or at least preferred) description of the recalcitrant island.  That it’s certainly not but in both the popular-press and specialist journals, the phrase “renegade province” is habitually used to describe Beijing’s views of Taiwan.  Given that Beijing actually calls Taiwan the “Taiwan Province” (sometimes styled as “Taiwan District” but there seems no substantive difference in meaning) and has explicitly maintained it reserves the right to reclaim the territory (by use of military invasion if need be), it’s certainly not unreasonable to assume that does reflect the politburo's view but within the PRC, “renegade province” is so rare (in Chinese or English) as to be effectively non-existent, the reason said to be that rather than a renegade, the island is thought of as a province pretending to be independent; delusional rather than defiant.  Researchers have looked into the matter when the phrase “renegade province” was first used in English when describing Taiwan.  There may be older or more obscure material which isn’t indexed or hasn’t been digitized but of that which can be searched, the first reference appears to be in a US literary journal from 1973 (which, it later transpired, received secret funding from the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)).  It took a while to catch on but, appearing first in the New York Times in 1982, became a favorite during the administration of Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US president 1981-1989) and has been part of the standard language of commentary since.  Diplomats, aware of Beijing's views on the matter, tend to avoid the phrase, maintaining the “delusional rather than defiant” line.

Picture of defiance: Official State Portrait of Vladimir Putin (2002), oil on canvas by Igor Babailov (b 1965).

The idea of a territory being a “renegade province” can be of great political, psychological (and ultimately military) significance.  The core justification used by Mr Putin (Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin; b 1952; president or prime minister of Russia since 1999) when explaining why his “special military operation” against Ukraine in 2022 was not an “invasion” or “war of aggression” (he probably concedes it may be a “state of armed conflict”) was that he denied Ukraine was a sovereign, independent state and that Volodymyr Zelenskyy (b 1978, president of Ukraine since 2019) was not a legitimate president.  In other words, Ukraine is merely a region of the modern Russia in something of the way it was once one of the 15 constituent SSRs (Soviet Socialist Republic) of the Soviet Union.  Although the Kremlin doesn’t use the phrase, in Mr Putin’s world view, Ukraine is a renegade province and he likely believes that applies also to the Baltic States (Latvia, Lithuania & Estonia) and possibly other former SSRs.  Lake many, the CCP is watching events in Ukraine with great interest and, as recent “exercises” seem to suggest the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have sufficiently honed their techniques to execute either a blockade (which would be an “act of war”) or a “quarantine” (which would not), the attention of Western analysts is now focused on the hardly secret training being undertaken to perfect what’s needed for the triphibious operations demanded by a full-scale invasion.  The US think-tanks which think much about this possibility have suggested “some time” in 2027 as the likely point at which the military high command would assure the CCP’s central committee such a thing is possible.  What will happen will then depend upon (1) the state of things in the PRC and (2) the CCP’s assessment of how the long-term “strategic ambiguity” of Washington would manifest were an attempt made to finish the “unfinished business” of 1949.

Lindsay Lohan, who has lived a life of defiance.

The objectification of women’s body parts has of course been a theme in Western culture since at least Antiquity but rarely can as much attention been devoted to a single fingernail as the one photographed on Lindsay Lohan’s hand in July 2010 (during her “troubled starlet” phase).  The text printed on the fingernail was sufficiently explicit not to need a academic deconstruction of its alleged meaning, given image was taken when she sitting in court listening to a judge sentence her for one of her many transgressions; the consensus was the text was there to send a “defiant message” the internet’s collective conclusion (which wasn’t restricted to entertainment and celebrity sites) presumably reinforced by the nail being on the middle finger.  Ms Lohan admitted to fining this perplexing, tweeting on X (then known as Twitter) it was merely a manicure and had “…nothing to do w/court, it's an airbrush design from a stencil.”  So, rather than digital defiance, it was fashion.  Attributing a motif of defiance to Ms Lohan wasn’t unusual during “troubled starlet” phase, one site assessing a chronological montage of her famous mug shots before concluding with each successive shot, “Lindsay's face becomes more defiant — a young woman hardening herself against a world that had turned her into a punch-line”.

The Bolton-Paul Defiant (1939-1943)

The Parthian shot was a military tactic, used by mounted cavalry and made famous by the Parthians, an ancient people of the Persian lands (the modern-day Islamic Republic of Iran since 1979).  While in real or feigned retreat on horseback, the Parthian archers would, in full gallop, turn their bodies backward to shoot at the pursuing enemy.  This demanded both fine equestrian skills (a soldier’ hands occupied by his bows & arrows) and great confidence in one's mount, something gained only by time spent between man & beast.  To make the achievement more admirable still, the Parthians used neither stirrups nor spurs, relying solely on pressure from their legs to guide and control their galloping mounts and, with varying degrees of success, the tactic was adopted by many mounted military formations of the era including the Scythians, Huns, Turks, Magyars, and Mongols.  The Parthian Empire existed between 247 BC–224 AD.  The Royal Air Force (RAF) tried a variation of the Parthian shot with Bolton-Paul Defiant, a single-engined fighter and Battle of Britain contemporary of the better remembered Spitfire and Hurricane.  Uniquely, the Defiant had no forward-firing armaments, all its firepower being concentrated in four .303 machine guns in a turret behind the pilot.  The theory behind the design dates from the 1930s when the latest multi-engined monoplane bombers were much faster than contemporary single-engined biplane fighters then in service. The RAF considered its new generation of heavily-armed bombers would be able to penetrate enemy airspace and defend themselves without a fighter escort and this of course implied enemy bombers would similarly be able to penetrate British airspace with some degree of impunity.

Bolton-Paul Defiant.

By 1935, the concept of a turret-armed fighter emerged.  The RAF anticipated having to defend the British Isles against massed formations of unescorted enemy bombers and, in theory, turret-armed fighters would be able approach formations from below or from the side and coordinate their fire.  In design terms, it was a return to what often was done early in the World War I, though that had been technologically deterministic, it being then quite an engineering challenge to produce reliable and safe (in the sense of not damaging the craft's own propeller) forward-firing guns.  Deployed not as intended, but as a fighter used against escorted bombers, the Defiant enjoyed considerable early success, essentially because at attack-range, it appeared to be a Hurricane and the German fighter pilots were of course tempted attack from above and behind, the classic hunter's tactic.  They were course met by the the Defiant's formidable battery.  However, the Luftwaffe learned quickly, unlike the RAF which for too long persisted with their pre-war formations which were neat and precise but also excellent targets.  Soon the vulnerability of the Defiant resulted in losses so heavy its deployment was unsustainable and it was withdrawn from front-line combat.  It did though subsequently proved a useful stop-gap as a night-fighter and provided the RAF with an effective means of combating night bombing until aircraft designed for the purpose entered service.

The Trump class "battleships"

In a surprise announcement, the Pentagon announced the impending construction of a “new battleship class” the first of the line (USS Defiant) to be the US Navy’s “largest surface combatant built since World War II [1939-1945]”.  The initial plans call for a pair to be launched with a long-term goal of as many as two dozen with construction to begin in 2030.  Intriguingly, Donald Trump (b 1946; US president 2017-2021 and since 2025) revealed that while the Department of Defense’s (it’s also now the Department of War) naval architects would “lead the design”, he personally would be involved “…because I’m a very aesthetic person.”  That may sound a strange imperative when designing something as starkly functional as a warship but in navies everywhere there’s a long tradition of “the beautiful ship” and the design language still in use, although much modified, is recognizably what it was more than a century earlier.  The Secretary of the Navy certainly stayed on-message, announcing the USS Defiant would be “…the largest, deadliest and most versatile and best-looking warship anywhere on the world’s oceans”, adding that components for the project would “be made in every state.”  It won't however be the widest because quirk of ship design in the US Navy is that warships tend to be limited to a beam (width) of around 33 metres (108 feet) because that’s the limit for vessels able to pass through the Panama Canal.

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

By comparison with the existing surface fleet the 35,000 ton Defiant will be impressively large although, by historic standards, the largest (non-carrier) surface combatants now in service are of modest dimensions and displacement.  The largest now afloat are the 15,000-ton Zumwalt class destroyers (which really seem to be cruisers) while the 10,000 ton Ticonderoga class cruisers (which really are destroyers) are more numerous.  So, even the Defiant will seem small compared with the twentieth century Dreadnoughts (which became a generic term for “biggest battleship”), the US Iowa class displacing 60,000 ton at their heaviest while the Japanese Yamato-class weighted-in at 72,000.  Even those behemoths would have been dwarfed by the most ambitious of the H-Class ships in Plan-Z which were on German drawing boards early in World War II.  Before reality bit hard, Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) left physics to the engineers and wasn't too bothered by economics.  After being disappointed the proposals the successors to the Bismarck-class ships would have their main armament increased only from eight 15-inch (380 mm) to eight 16 inch cannons, he ordered OKM (Oberkommando der Marine; the Naval High Command) to design bigger ships.  That directive emerged as the ambitious Plan Z which would have demanded so much steel, essentially nothing else in the Reich could have been built.  Although not one vessel in Plan Z ever left the slipway (the facilities even to lay down the keels non-existent), such a fleet would have been impressive, the largest (the H-44) fitted with eight 20-inch (508 mm) cannons.  Even more to the Führer’s liking was the concept of the H-45, equipped with eight 31.5 inch (800 mm) Gustav siege guns.  However, although he never lost faith in the key to success on the battlefield being bigger and bigger tanks, the experience of surface warfare at sea convinced Hitler the days of the big ships were over and he would even try to persuade the navy to retire all their capital ships and devote more resources to the submarines which, as late as 1945, he hoped might still prolong the war.  Had he imposed such priorities in 1937-1938 so the Kriegsmarine (German Navy) could have entered World War II with the ability permanently to have 100 submarines engaged in high-seas raiding rather than barely a dozen, the early course of the war might radically have been different.  Germany indeed entered the war without a single aircraft carrier (the only one laid down never completed), such was the confidence the need to confront the Royal Navy either would never happen or was years away.

The US Navy in 1940 began construction of six Iowa class battleships but only four were ever launched because it had become clear the age of the aircraft carrier and submarine had arrived and the last battleship launched was the Royal Navy’s HMS Vanguard which entered service in 1946.  Although the admirals remained fond of the fine cut of her silhouette on the horizon, to the Treasury (an institution in the austere, post-war years rapidly asserting its authority over the Admiralty) the thing was a white elephant, something acknowledged even by the romantic, battleship-loving Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who, when in November, 1953 planning a trip to Bermuda for a summit meeting with Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969; US POTUS 1953-1961), opted to fly because “it costs Stg£30,000 if we go by Vanguard, and only £3,000 by air.”  In 1959, Vanguard was sold for scrap and broken up the next year while the last of the Iowa class ships were decommissioned in 1992 after having spent many years of their life in a non-active reserve.  Defiant is of course a most Churchillian word and after World War I (1914-1918, he was asked by a French municipality to devise the wording for its war memorial.  He proposed:

IN WAR: RESOLUTION

IN DEFEAT: DEFIANCE

IN VICTORY: MAGNANIMITY

IN PEACE: GOODWILL

At the time, old Georges Clemenceau (1841–1929; French prime minister 1906-1909 & 1917-1920) wasn’t feeling much magnanimity towards the Germans and nor was he much in the mood to extend any goodwill so Churchill’s suggestion was rejected.  

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

The conventional wisdom therefore was the days of the big warships were done and the Soviet Navy’s curious decision in the 1980s to lay down five (four of which were launched) Kirov class battlecruisers seemed to confirm the view.  Although the Kremlin called the ships тяжёлый атомный ракетный крейсер (heavy nuclear-powered guided missile cruisers), admiralties in the West, still nostalgic lot, choose to revive the old name “battlecruiser”.  The battlecruiser (essentially a battleship with less armor) was a brainchild of the naval theorists of the early twentieth century but while the concept was sound (and in practice may have proved so if the theory had been followed at sea) but in service was a disappointment and none were commissioned after 1920 until the Soviets revived the idea.  As recently as 2018, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) sources were sceptical any of the Russian ships would ever return to service but in 2025 the Admiral Nakhimov (ex-Kalinin) emerged from a long and expensive re-fit & modernization to serve as the world’s biggest warship.  Although fast and heavily armed, concern remains about her vulnerability to missiles and torpedoes.

Depiction of Trump class USS Defiant issued by the US Navy, December, 2025.

The US Navy seems confident about the protection afforded by the Trump class’s systems, claiming “the battleship [the Pentagon’s term] will be capable of operating independently, as part of a Carrier Strike Group, or commanding its own Surface Action Group depending on the mission and threat environment.”  In other words, unlike an aircraft carrier, the security of the vessel does not depend on a flotilla of destroyers and other smaller escort vessels.  The first of the Trump class is projected to cost between US$10-15 billion although, on the basis of experience, few will be surprised if this number “blows out”.  The Trump class will be the flagships for the Navy’s “Golden Fleet” initiative (an old naval term dating from days of the Spanish colonial Empire and nothing to do with Mr Trump’s fondness for the metal).  In an age in which small, cheap, UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles, usually referred to as drones) have revolutionized warfare (on land and at sea), the return of the big ships is as interesting as it was unexpected and analysts are already writing their assessments of the prospects of success.

Although the concept wasn’t new, it was late in the nineteenth century naval architects began to apply the word “class” systematically to group ships of the same design, the pioneers the Royal Navy but other powers soon adopted the practice.  It had long been the practice for warships to be constructed on the basis of substantially replicating existing designs and some truly were “identical” to the extent a series would now be called a “class” but before the terminology became (more or less) standardized, warships usually were described by their “Rate” or “Type” (first-rate ship of the line, corvette, frigate etc) but, in the usual military way, there was also much informal slang including phrases such as “the Majestic battleships” or “ships of the Iron Duke type”.  The crystallization of the “class” concept was really a result of technological determinism as the methods developed in factories which emerged during the industrial revolution spread to ship-building; steam power, hulls of iron & steel and the associated complex machinery made design & construction increasingly expensive, thus the need to amortize investment and reduce build times by ordering ships in batches with near-identical specifications.

Navies in the era were also becoming more bureaucratic (a process which never stopped and some believe is accelerating still) and Admiralties became much taken with precise accounting and doctrinal categorisation.  The pragmatic admirals however saw no need to reinvent the wheel, “class” already well-established in engineering and taxonomy, the choice thus an obvious administrative convenience.  The “new” nomenclature wasn’t heralded as a major change or innovations, the term just beginning to appear in the 1870s in Admiralty documents, construction programmes and parliamentary papers in which vessels were listed in groups including Devastation class ironclad turret ships (laid down 1869), Colossus class battleships (laid down 1879) and Admiral class battleships (1880s).  In recent history tests, warships prior to this era sometimes are referred to as “Ship-of-the-line class”, “Three decker class” etc but this use is retrospective.  The French Navy adopted the convention almost simultaneously (with the local spelling classe) with Imperial Germany’s Kaiserliche Marine (Imperial Navy) following in the 1890s with Klasse.  The US Navy was comparatively late to formalise the use and although “class” in this context does appear in documents in the 1890s, the standardization wasn’t complete until about 1912.

As a naming convention (“King George V class”, “Iowa class” etc), the rule is the name chosen is either (1) the first ship laid down, or (2) the lead ship commissioned.  According to Admiralty historians, this wasn’t something determined by a committee or the whim of an admiral (both long naval traditions) but was just so obviously practical.  It certainly wasn’t an original idea because the term “class” was by the late nineteenth century well established in industrial production, civil engineering, and military administration; if anything the tradition-bound admirals were late-adopters, sticking to their old classificatory habit long after it had outlived its usefulness.  With ships becoming bigger and more complex, what was needed was a system (which encompassed not only the ships but also components such as guns, torpedoes, engines etc) which grouped objects according to their defined technical specification rather than their vague “type” (which by then had become most elastic) or individual instances; naval architecture had entered the “age of interchangability”.

A docked Boomin' Beaver.

It’s good the US Navy is gaining (appropriately large) “Trump Class” warships (which the president doubtless will call “battleships” although they’re more in the “battlecruiser” tradition).  Within the fleet however there are on the register many smaller vessels and the most compact is the 19BB (Barrier Boat), a specialized class of miniature tugboat used deploy and maintain port security booms surrounding Navy ships and installations in port.  Over the last quarter century there have been a dozen-odd commissioned of which ten remain in active service.  Unlike many of the Pentagon’s good (and expensive) ideas, the Barrier Boats were a re-purposing of an existing design, their original purpose being in the logging industry where they were used to manoeuvre logs floating along inland waterways.  In that role the loggers dubbed them “log broncs” because the stubby little craft would “rear up like a rodeo bronco” when spun around by 180^o.  Sailors of course have their own slang and they (apparently affectionately) call the 19BBs the “Boomin’ Beaver”, the origin of that being uncertain but it may verge on the impolite.  It’s not known if President Trump is aware of the useful little BB19 but if brought to his attention, he may be tempted to order two of them renamed “USS Joe Biden” and “USS Crooked Hillary” although, unlike those reprobates, the Boomin’ Beavers have done much good work for the nation.

The Arc de Triomphe, Paris (left), Donald Trump with model of his proposed arch, the White House, October, 2025 (centre) and a model of the arch, photographed on the president's Oval Office desk (right).  Details about the arch remain sketchy but it's assumed (1) it will be "big" and (2) there will be some gold, somewhere.

As well as big ships (and the big Donald J Trump Ballroom already under construction where the White House’s East Wing once stood), Mr Trump is also promising a “big arch”.  A part of the president’s MDCBA (Make D.C. Beautiful Again) project, the structure (nicknamed the “Triumphal Arch” and in the style of the Arc de Triomphe which stands in the centre of the Place Charles de Gaulle (formerly the Place de l’Étoile), the western terminus of the avenue des Champs-Élysées) is scheduled to be completed in time to celebrate the nation’s 250^th anniversary on 4 July 2026.  Presumably, on that day, it will be revealed the official name is something like the “Donald J Trump Sestercentennial Arch” which will appear on the structure in large gold letters.  The arch is said to be “privately funded”, using money left over from what was donated to build the ballroom, a financing mechanism which has attracted some comment from those concerned about the “buying of influence”.

Adolf Hitler's (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945) sketch of an arch (1926, left) and Hitler, Albert Speer (1905–1981; Nazi court architect 1934-1942; Nazi minister of armaments and war production 1942-1945) and others examining Speer's model of the arch, presented 20 April 1939 upon the occasion of the Führer’s 50^th birthday (right; note the pattern in carpet).

A model of Germania.  To give some indication of the scale, within the dome of the huge meeting hall (at top of image), St. Peter's Cathedral in Rome would have fitted several times over; its diameter of the dome would have been 250 metres (825 feet).

Commissioned to honor those who fought and died for France during the French Revolutionary (1792-1802) and Napoleonic Wars (1803-1815), construction of the Arc de Triomphe (officially the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile) absorbed 30-odd years between 1806-1836, as a piece of representational architecture the structure is thought perfectly proportioned for assessment by the human eye and perhaps for this reason it has been admired by many.  As early as 1926, Adolf Hitler sketched his vision of a grand arch for Berlin, while bitter experience taught him the big warships were a bad idea because of their vulnerability to air attack, he never lost his enthusiasm for megalomania in architecture and in Albert Speer he found the ideal architect.  Noting the dimensions in Hitler’s sketch, Speer responded with something in the spirit of their blueprint for Germania.  Hitler’s planned the rebuilding of Berlin to be complete by 1950, less than ten years after the expected victory in a war which would have made him the master of Europe from the French border to the Ural mountains (things didn’t work out well for him).  While the 50 metre (163 feet) tall Arc de Triomphe presented a monumental appearance and provided a majestic terminus for the Champs Elysees, Speer’s arch stood 117 meters (384 feet) in height but even though obviously substantial, it would have been entirely in scale with the rest of Germania, the whole place built in a way to inspire awe simply by virtue of sheer size.

Solastalgia

Solastalgia (pronounced sol-las-jee-uh)

The pain or distress caused by the loss or lack or solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory

2003: A coining by Professor Glenn Albrecht (b 1953), the construct built from the Latin sōlācium (solace, comfort) +‎ -algia (pain).  Sōlācium was from sōlor (to comfort, console, solace) + –ac- (a variant of –āx- (used to form adjectives expressing a tendency or inclination to the action of the root verb)) +‎ -ium, from the Latin -um (in this context used to indicate the setting where a given activity is carried out).  The –algia suffix was from the New Latin -algia, from the Ancient Greek -αλγία (-algía), from compounds ending in Ancient Greek ἄλγος (álgos) (pain) +‎ the Ancient Greek -ῐ́ᾱ (-ĭ́ā).  The most well-known was probably kephalalgíā (headache).  Solastalgia is a noun, Solastalgic is a noun and adjective and solastalgically is an adverb; the noun plural is solastalgias.

Elements what became the modern environmentalism can be found in writings from Antiquity and there are passages in Biblical Scripture which are quoted to support the notion Christ and God Himself were greenies.  However, as a political movement, it was very much a creation of the late twentieth century although Theodore Roosevelt (TR, 1858–1919; US president 1901-1909), despite his reputation as a big game hunter, made some notable contributions.  In what proved an active retirement, Roosevelt would often remark that more than the landmark anti-trust laws or his Nobel Peace Prize, the most enduring legacy of his presidency would be the federal legislation relating to the conservation and protection of the natural environment, both land and wildlife.  While he was in the White House, new national parks and forests were created, the total areas an impressive 360,000 square miles (930,000 km²), a reasonable achievement given the pressure vested interests exerted upon the Congress to prevent anything which would impinge upon “development”.

Portrait of Theodore Roosevelt (1903) by John Singer Sargent (1856–1925).

Roosevelt though was not typical and in most places the profits from industrialization & development proved more compelling than abstractions about the environment; even when the effects of climate change became obvious, it was clear only a crisis would rapidly create the conditions for change.  Events such as the London’s “Great Smog” of 1952 were so dramatic changes were made (culminating in the Clean Air Act (1956)) and the state of the air quality in San Francisco & Los Angeles was by the late 1950s so obviously deteriorating that California enacted anti-pollution laws even before there was much federal legislation, the state remaining in the vanguard to this day.  Those political phenomenon for a while encouraged the thought that even though decisive action to reduce carbon emissions was improbable while climate change (once referred to as “the greenhouse effect” and later “global warming”) seemed both remote and conceptual, once the “crisis events” began to affect those living in the rich countries of the global north (ie “the white folks”), the term would morph into “climate crisis” and resource allocation would shift to address the problem.  That theory remains sound but what was under-estimated was the threshold point for the word “crisis”.  Despite the increasing frequency and severity of wildfires, soaring temperatures, polar vortexes and floods, thus far the political system is still being adjusted on the basis of gradual change: the imperative remains managing rather than rectifying the problem.  Once, television-friendly events such as (1) melting glaciers creating landslides destroying entire villages which have for centuries sate in the Swiss Alps, (2) suburbs of mansions in the hills of Los Angeles being razed to the ground by wildfires, (3) previously unprecedented floods in Europe and Asia killing hundreds and (4) heat waves routinely becoming a feature of once temperate regions would have been thought “crisis triggers” but the political system has thus far absorbed them.

Silent Spring (First edition, 1962) by Rachel Carson.

The origins of the environment movement in its modem form are often traced to the publication in 1962 of Silent Spring by marine biologist Rachel Carson (1907–1964) although it took years for the controversy that book generated to coalesce into an embryonic “green” movement.  Silent Spring was a best-seller which (in an accessible form) introduced to the general public notions of the threat chemical pollution posed to ecology, the power of her argument being to identify the issue not as something restricted to a narrow section of agricultural concerns but as part of a systemic threat to the balance of nature and the very survival of human civilization.  There were many other influences (demographic, cultural, economic, educational etc) at this time and by the late 1960s, it was apparent concerns about pollution, over-population, pesticide use and such had created an identifiable shared language and public visibility although it was something too fragmented to be called a movement, the goals and advocated courses of action remaining disparate.  Structurally however, organizations were being formed and a convenient turning point suggesting critical mass had been achieved came in the US in April, 1970 when some 20 million participants received wide coverage in the media for Earth Day, a warning to the politicians that “the environment” might affect voting patterns.  It was in this era that the framework of US environmental legislation was built including the Clean Air Act (1970), Clean Water Act (1972) and Endangered Species Act (1973) was formed, all passed during the administration of Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) and under Nixon, in 1970, the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) was created, an institution of which Theodore Roosevelt would have approved.

Earth Emotions: New Words for a New World (2019) by Professor Glenn Albrecht.

When working as a academic, Glenn Albrecht was granted conventional academic titles (such as Professor of Sustainability) but his work puts him in the category of “ecophilosopher”, a concept which would have been understood by the natural scientists of Antiquity; it’s now an increasingly populated field with a niche in popular publishing.  The eco- prefix was from the French éco-, from the Latin oeco-, from Ancient Greek οἶκος (oîkos) (house, household) and was for generations familiar in “economy” and its derivatives but is now most associated with ecology or the environment (in the ecological sense).  For better or worse, it has come to be applied to novel constructs including ecotourism (forms of “sustainable” tourism claimed to cause less environmental damage), ecofascism (literally “fascist politics with support for ecological concerns” but used usually (as a derogatory) to refer to uncompromising, aggressive or violent environmental activism, the most extreme form of which is ecoterrorism (a label used rather loosely, even of vegans who stage protests outside restaurants serving the products of the slaughter industry)) and ecofeminism (a socio-political movement combining feminism and environmentalism).

The ecophilosophers have produced many publications but Professor Albrecht has been unusual in that he has been prolific also in the coining of words, especially those which relate to or are consequent upon what he calls the “sumbiocentric” (taking into account the centrality of the process of symbiosis in all of our deliberations on human affairs”).  Such creations in emerging or expanding fields of study are of course not unusual.  In environmentalism, new terms and words have in recent decades appeared but there’s been a element of technological determinism to some.  Although the notion humanity lives on a “ship travelling through space” had been in use since at least the mid-nineteenth century, the metaphor had been nautical and it wasn’t until “spaceships” started to be launched the 1960s the term was updated to the now familiar “spaceship earth”.  Neologisms, even if used in context can be baffling but helpfully, Professor Albrecht published also a “glossary of psycho erratic terms” with pocket definitions explaining his lexicon of the “Earth’s emotions”.

Endemophilia: A “love of place”, specifically the “particular love of the locally and regionally distinctive in the people of a place.”  The mechanism for this is: “Once a person realizes that the landscape they have before them is not replicated in even a general way elsewhere in the country or on their continent or even in the world, there is ample room for a positive Earth emotion based on rarity and uniqueness.”  This is classified as a spectrum condition in that the more “a uniqueness is understood… the more it can be appreciated”.  Professor Albrecht was speaking of geology, florna & fauna but figuratively the concept can be applied to the built environment in urban areas and it doesn’t demand an interest in architecture to take pleasure from the form of (some) buildings.

Eutierria: A “feeling of total harmony with our place, and the naïve loss of ego (merging subject and ego) we often felt as children”.  Professor Albrecht cites the author Richard Louv (b 1949) who used the phrase “nature deficit disorder” in suggesting a word was needed to describe the state of harmony one could achieve if “connected to the Earth”.  Eutierria is a “positive feeling of oneness with the Earth and its life forces, where the boundaries between self and the rest of nature are obliterated, and a deep sense of peace and contentedness pervades consciousness”.

The HUCE (Harvard University Center for the Environment) in 2017 noted the phenomenon of mermosity, recording that some six months earlier New York Magazine had “published its most-read article ever, surpassing a photo spread of Lindsay Lohan.”  The topic the HUCE summarized as “Doom”, the apocalyptic visions of a world ravaged by climate change, the young especially afflicted by a crushing sense of dread.

Mermosity: “An anticipatory state of being worried about the possible passing of the familiar, and its replacement by that which does not sit comfortably in one’s sense of place.”  This is a word now with great currency because researchers have noted one aspect of the prominence in the media of (1) human-induced climate change and (2) the apparent inevitability of its adverse consequences has resulted in a pervading sense of doom among some, especially the young.  According to some psychologists, their young patients are exhibiting “mourning-like” behaviour, thinking the planet already in the throes of destruction and they exist merely as mourners at its protracted funeral.

Meteoranxiety: The “anxiety felt in the face of the threat of the frequency and severity of extreme weather events”.  This is an example of a feedback loop in that weather events (rain, storms, heatwaves etc) now tending by many to be attributed exclusively to human-induced climate change, thus exacerbating one’s mermosity.  In the literature of psychology, behavioral economics, neuroscience, philosophy, sociology & political science there are explanations (often replete with house jargon) explaining how “perception bias” & “cognitive bias” operate and interact but such things rarely are discussed on the TikTok news feeds which these days are so influential in shaping world views.

Solastalgia: “The pain or distress caused by the loss or lack or solace and the sense of desolation connected to the present state of one’s home and territory”.  This is the “lived experience of negative environmental change” and reflects the sense of loss of what once was (or one’s imagined construct of what once was), a phenomenon Professor Albrecht describes as “the homesickness you have when you are still at home”.  Although coined to be used in the context of climate change, it can be applied more widely and the feeling will be familiar to those who notice the lack of familiar landmarks in cities as urban redevelopment changes the architecture.  In those cases, the distress can be made more troubling still because even a building one may for years frequently have seen rapidly can fade from memory to the point where it can be hard to remember its appearance, even if it stood for decades.

Google ngram: Because of the way Google harvests data for their ngrams, they’re not literally a tracking of the use of a word in society but can be usefully indicative of certain trends, (although one is never quite sure which trend(s)), especially over decades.  As a record of actual aggregate use, ngrams are not wholly reliable because: (1) the sub-set of texts Google uses is slanted towards the scientific & academic and (2) the technical limitations imposed by the use of OCR (optical character recognition) when handling older texts of sometime dubious legibility (a process AI should improve).  Where numbers bounce around, this may reflect either: (1) peaks and troughs in use for some reason or (2) some quirk in the data harvested.  Being recent, the ngram for solastagia should be an untypically accurate indication of trends in use but it’s a quantitative and not qualitative measure: Although a word very much of the climate change era, it has been used in other contexts as, as a neologism, it appears also in many dictionaries and other on-line lists.

Sumbiocentric: “Taking into account the centrality of the process of symbiosis in all of our deliberations on human affairs”.  The special place environmentalism has assumed in the public consciousness means the sumbiocentric is positioned as something beyond just another construction of ethics and should be thought a kind of secular, moral theology.  Ominously, one apparent implication in this would appear to be the desirability (according to some the necessity) for some sort of internationally “co-ordinated” government, a concept with a wide vista and in various forms at times advocated by figures as diverse as the polemicist playwright George Bernard Shaw (GBS; 1856-1950) and Edward Teller (1908–2003), the so-called “father of the hydrogen bomb”.

Sumbiophilia: “The love of living together”.  This would apparently be the state of things in the symbiocene, a speculative era which would succeed the Anthropocene and be characterized by a harmonious and cooperative coexistence between humans and the rest of nature which presumably would be something of a new Jerusalem although shepherds, child care workers and others would be advised not to take literally the Biblical Scripture: “The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” (Isaiah 11:6, King James Version (KJV, 1611)).  However, other than sensible precautions when around carnivorous predators, all would exist in a symbiosis (living together for mutual benefit) without the destructive practices of the anthropocene.  In the world of Green Party wine & cheese evenings, sumbiophilia probably seems the most natural thing in the world although the party leadership would be sufficiently realistic to understand not all would agree so, when it was made compulsory, “re-education camps” would be needed to “persuade” the recalcitrant.  As used by Professor Albrecht, sumbiophilia is an ideal but one obviously counter-historical because the development of the nation state (which took millennia and was (more or less) perfected in the nationalisms which have been the dominant political paradigm since the nineteenth century) suggests what people love is not us all “living together” but groups of us “keeping the others out”.  Not for nothing are idealists thought the most dangerous creatures on Earth.

Terrafuric: “The extreme anger unleashed within those who can clearly see the self-destructive tendencies in the current forms of industrial-technological society and feel they must protest and act to change its direction”.  This is another spectrum condition ranging from writing truculent letters to the New York Times, to members of Extinction Rebellion super-gluing themselves to the road to assassinating the “guilty parties”, a la Luigi Mangione (b 1998).

Terranascia (“Earth creating forces”) and terraphthora (“Earth destroying forces”) are companion terms which could be used by geologists, cosmologists and others but the significance in this context is that humans are now (and have long been) among the most ecologically destructive forces known.

Hannah Arendt and Martin Heidegger, History of a Love (2017) by Antonia Grunenberg (b 1944).  Hannah Arendt's (1906-1975) relationship with Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) began when she was a 19 year old student of philosophy and he her professor, married and aged 36.  Both, for different reasons, would more than once have experienced solastalgia.

Solastalgia began life in the milieu of the climate change wars but poets and others beyond the battleground have been drawn to the word, re-purposing it in abstract or figurative ways, comparing the process of literal environmental degradation with losses elsewhere.  The adaptations have included (1) Social & cultural change (loss of familiar traditions or communities), (2) Linguistic erosion (mourning the disappearance of words, dialects or the quirks in language with which one grew up, replaced often by new (and baffling) forms of slang), (3) One’s personal emotional framework (the loss of friends, partner or family members), (4) Aging (the realization of mounting decrepitude), (5) Digital displacement (a more recent phenomenon which covers a range including an inability to master new technology, grief when once enjoyed digital spaces become toxic, commercialized or abandoned and having to “upgrade” from familiar, functional software to newer versions which offer no advantages), (6) Artistic loss (one’s favourite forms of music, art or literature become unfashionable and neglected) and (7) Existential disconnection (not a new idea but now one an increasing number claim to suffer; a kind of philosophical estrangement in which one feels “the world” (in the sense the German philosopher Martin Heidegger used the word) has become strange and unfamiliar).

Quondam

Quondam (pronounced kwon-duhm or kwon-dam)

(1) As a pronominal, former; one-time; having been formerly.

(2) As a pronominal, of an earlier time.

1580s: An adaptation of the earlier (1530-1550) from earlier use as an adverb (formerly) and noun (former holder of an office, title or position), from the Latin adverb quondam (formerly, at some time, at one time; once in a while) the construct being quom, cum (when, as), from the primitive Indo-European root kwo- (stem of relative and interrogative pronouns) + -dam (the demonstrative ending).  Quondam is an adjective, quondamship is a noun and quondamly is an adverb; the noun quondam is now archaic but can be used in the sense of “one’s ex” and if one is prolific in the generation of quondamship, the noun plural is quondams.  According to one severe critic on Urban Dictionary, “quondamness” is defined as “A thesaurus full of imaginary yet important sounding words that shoddy authors use in order to find strange obscure or even imaginary words to use in their stories, in the hopes of sounding more intelligent than they will ever be.” 

For a simple concept ("used to be"), quondam enjoys an impressive number of synonyms including former, previous, erstwhile, old, one-time, past, late, once, whilom, sometime, defunct, bygone, vanished, gone, departed, extinct and expired.  Some (extinct, expired, defunct) have specific technical meanings which limit their use while others (late, departed, gone) are most associated with the dead but otherwise quondam is available as a way of enriching a text.  In informal use, quondam has been used as a noun in the sense of one's ex-partner being “a quondam” and, as a re-purposed literary word, it has been adapted to the social media age with helpful, non-standard forms coined:

Quondam: One's ex-partner.

Quondaming: The act of dumping a partner.

Quondamed: The act of being so dumped.

Quaondamer: One who dumps a partner (in the form “serial quondamer”, applied to those who frequently dump).

Quondamee: One who has been quonadmed by a quandamer (in the form “serial quondamee”, applied to those frequently dumped).

Quondamish: An act which can be interpreted as being dumped but requires confirmation.

Quondamesque: Behavior which suggests having been dumped.

Quondamism: The study of dumped ex-partners (a branch of behaviorism).

Quondamist: A practitioner of quondamism (employed often by internet gossip sites) who can distinguish between genuine quondamees and those exhibiting quondam-like characteristics.  The experts have developed predictive models which they apply to work out who is next to be quondamed.

A quondam atheist who changed his mind: The Rage Against God: How Atheism Led Me to Faith (2010) by Peter Hitchens.

As a pronominal, writers like to use somewhat obscure quondam when drawing attention to those who were once “something” have for whatever reason become “something else”.  There are quondam atheists who became Christians including the (1) British academic & writer CS Lewis (1898–1963) who seems most to have be influenced in his conversion by JRR Tolkien (1892–1973), the US journalist Lee Strobel (b 1952) who set out to disprove Christianity after his wife converted, but the hunter ended up captured by the game, becoming a Christian, (3) the Physician-geneticist Francis Collins (b 1950) who lead the Human Genome Project and was either atheist or agnostic during his early scientific career but became affected by his encounters with expressions of faith among his patients although reading CS Lewis seems also have had a profound effect, (4) the writer Peter Hitchens (b 1951) who was a most truculent militant atheist (more so even than his brother Christopher) but returned to the faith of his youth after a period of personal reflection (which soon he’d call “soul-searching”) and witnessing “the consequences of godlessness” (although he writes for the tabloid Mail on Sunday which can’t be good for the soul), (5) the writer and broadcaster Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) who as well as being quondam atheist was also quondam Marxist (a common coupling) and, like a 40-a-day smoker who has kicked the habit, having had his fun, he became a most moralistic Christian and (6) TS Eliot (1888–1965) who probably never was a quondam atheist but certainly had his moments of doubt so may qualify as an (off & on) quondam agnostic until his thirties and some of his later poetry does suggest he was keeping to a Godly path.

In political science there was a whole school of quondam communists of the “God that Failed” school, often arrayed in lists by conservatives anxious to rub in the “I told you so” moment.  The favorites though are the quondam Trotskyites (“Trots” to friend & foe alike) and while variously they’ve swung to some to conservatism, liberalism, nationalism or even God, it’s remarkable how many include the term “ex-Trotskyist” in their biodata, there being something romantic about comrade Leon Trotsky (1879-1940) and his Fourth International not shared by either comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who ordered his murder or Karl Marx (1818-1883) although the latter should be treated sympathetically because of his many troubles including constipation (measured in days) but by far the greatest distraction must have been the painful genital boils.  In April 1867, in one of the many letters he sent to his collaborator Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), he lamented: “I shan’t bore you by explaining [the] carbuncles on my posterior and near the penis, the final traces of which are now fading but which made it extremely painful for me to adopt a sitting and hence a writing posture. I am not taking arsenic because it dulls my mind too much and I need to keep my wits about me.”

The Revolution Betrayed: What is the Soviet Union and Where is it Going? (1937) by Leon Trotsky.  Three years after publication, comrade Stalin's assassins finally tracked down comrade Trotsky and murdered him; the weapon was an ice axe.

There was the writer and eternal enfant terrible Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011), in his youth a member of the International Socialists, who drifted away gradually but perceptibly before re-shaping his world-view into Islam vs the West after the 9/11 attacks, becoming a fellow-traveller with the neo-cons.  Across the Atlantic there was Irving Kristol (1920-2009) whose time with the Young People's Socialist League seems to have been more than youthful impetuosity because his faction was the then unfashionable Trotskyist group opposed to the Soviet state being built by comrade Stalin.  The extent to which his hard-right conservative wife changed his intellectual direct can be debated but for those who like “nurture vs nature” discussions, their son William Kristol (b 1952) was born a right-winger and has never deviated.  Perhaps the most famous quondam Trotskyist & Communist (he was inconsistent in his self-identification) of the Cold War years was the quondam Soviet spy Whittaker Chambers (1901-1961) whose testimony was crucial in the trial of State Department official Alger Hiss (1904–1996), the case on which the young congressman Richard Nixon (1913-1994; US president 1969-1974) built his reputation as an anti-communist.  Nixon later became one of many quondam presidents but the only one rendered thus by having to resign in disgrace.

Lindsay Lohan's quondam list (2013), partially redacted for publication by In Touch magazine.

Because her hectic lifestyle had for a decade-odd been chronicled (accurately and not) by the tabloid press, even before In Touch magazine in 2014 published a partially redacted list of three-dozen names Lindsay Lohan had in her own hand compiled of those with whom she’d enjoyed intimacy, she already had a reputation as a serial quondammer.  The list contained 36 names which seemed a reasonable achievement for someone then 27 although it wasn’t clear whether the count of three-dozen quandams was selective or exhaustive and upon publication it produced reactions among those mentioned ranging from “no comment” to denials in the style of a Clintonesque “I did not have sex with that woman”.  Other points of interest included Ms Lohan's apparently intact short & long-term memory and her commendably neat handwriting.  She seems to favor the “first letter bigger” style in which the format is “all capitals” but the first letter of a sentence or with proper nouns such as names is larger.  In typography, the idea is derived from the “drop cap”, a centuries-old tradition in publishing where the opening letter of a sentence is many times the size of the rest, the text wrapping around the big letter.  In many cases, a drop cap was an elaborate or stylized version of the letter.  Her writing was praised as neat and effortlessly legible.  

Ms Lohan was about as pleased the list had been published as Gore Vidal (1925–2012) might have been if gifted the complete anthology (deluxe edition, leather bound with commentaries by the author) of the works of Joyce Carol Oates (b 1938).  It transpired the list of 36 was written as part of the fifth step of the Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) programme Ms Loan was in 2013 undertaking at the Betty Ford Clinic; that is known informally as the “Confession” step and it encourages members to acknowledge the harm caused to themselves and others in their pursuit of alcohol: “Admitted to God, to oneself, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.”  Legally, despite being tagged “confession”, US courts have never extended to the AA the same status of privileged communication which conferred on what passes between penitent and priest in the confession box so committing one’s sins to paper is doubly dangerous.  Subsequently interviewed, Ms Lohan said she could “neither confirm or deny” the accuracy of the list but seemed to confirm what In Touch had published appeared to be a photograph of what she’d written.  That was an interesting distinction to draw but who took the photograph remains a mystery although she concluded: “Someone when I was moving must have taken a photo of it”, adding: “So that’s a really personal thing and that’s unfortunate.”  Ms Lohan’s best-known quondam remains former special friend Samantha Ronson.

There is also much quondamism among those disillusioned by the cults of which they were once devoted followers and there have been many confessed Freemasons who abandoned the pseudo-faith, denouncing it as they stormed from the temple vowing never to return.  Although the Freemasons have centuries of experience in conducting cover-ups and are suspected to have infiltrated many news organizations, the fragmentation of the media in the internet age has meant stories sometimes do hit the headlines.  In 2024, the Rev Canon Dr Joseph Morrow (b 1954) not only resigned as Grand Master of The Freemasons of Scotland but also ceased to be a Mason.  Dr Morrow’s very public exit from the cult saw a flurry of speculation about what low skulduggery might have been involved, suggestions the he had been undermined by a “traditionalist” Masonic faction opposed to his plans to “modernize the craft”.  The conservatives clearly liked things the way then were and it seems there were tensions between members, some spooked by Dr Morrow pledged to oversee reform and widen recruitment, saying: “We will expand the global presence of Scottish freemasonry by inspiring our members to enjoy their involvement and by attracting new members.  This will be achieved by cultivating a positive culture of inclusivity and a meaningful impact on our communities.”  That must have sounded ominously like a DEI (diversity, equity & inclusion) agenda, not welcome by many in the all-male institution that is Scottish-rite Masonry and hearing Dr Morrow speak of “greater transparency” would have sat not well with those who prize Masonic secrecy and opaqueness.

Quondom Grand Master & quondom Freemason Dr Joseph Morrow in his Masonic Grand Master regalia.  Note the ceremonial apron being worn underneath jacket, a style almost unique to The Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry.

Suggestions were published alleging Dr Morrow left the cult because he’d learned the traditionalist faction was plotting and scheming against him, planning to propose an alternative grand master while he was on holiday in the Far East; his departure was said to be a case of “jumping before he was pushed”.  Circling the aprons, a spokesman for the Grand Lodge (1) denied any dissident members were plotting and scheming a palace coup, (2) claimed Dr Morrow had never raised “significant concerns”, (3) asserted: “No other candidate was planning to stand against him” and (4) maintained “Dr Morrow’s decision to resign was made for his own personal reasons.”  He concluded: “We are grateful for the huge contribution he has made to Scottish Freemasonry over many years and wish him well for the future.”  Whatever really happened, following his abrupt departure, the quondom Grand Master is also a quondom Freemason.